A report on Sunday said communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams allegedly used taxpayers’ money to to pay for her seventh wedding anniversary celebrations.
Read: Minister slams ‘malicious smear campaign’
The report, in the Sunday Independent newspaper, said the minister used taxpayers’ money last year on two trips, to New York and Switzerland, to take her husband, Thato Abrahams, abroad with her without permission from President Cyril Ramaphosa.
“While in Switzerland, Thato allegedly took the chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benz S600 that had been allocated to Ndabeni-Abrahams, from Geneva to Paris, in France, to go shopping,” the report said.
“Ndabeni-Abrahams has also been accused of outsourcing departmental functions to Thato, by allowing him to interview candidates for positions on the various boards for which she has political oversight,” it said.
Ndabeni-Abrahams’ spokeswoman, Nthabeleng Mokitimi-Dlamini, told the Sunday Independent that Ramaphosa’s permission was not needed for Thato Abrahams’ travels as the trips were “in line with limits set in the Ministerial Handbook”. — (c) 2020 NewsCentral Media
