The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) has uncovered serious discrepancies in a successful bid submitted to the Services Sector Education and Training Authority (Services SETA), including contradictory claims about the bidder’s experience and reference letters linked to members of its proposed project team.
OUTA’s investigation concerns tender PROC T630, advertised in July 2022 to appoint a panel of consultants to operationalise newly constructed skills centres. OUTA obtained the bid documents through a request under the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) in June 2026.
OUTA is publishing its full investigation report alongside this statement and will refer the report and supporting evidence to the relevant stakeholders and authorities.
Bid documents tell conflicting stories
The tender required bidders to demonstrate at least five years of project-management experience.
In a letter dated 2 August 2022, Resolutions Studio (Pty) Ltd claimed that it had successfully delivered skills-development projects for four SETAs during the preceding six years.
However, a statutory declaration included in the same bid stated that the company had been in business for three years. Central Supplier Database records show that Resolutions Studio registered on that database on 7 April 2021, approximately 16 months before submitting its bid.
A CSD registration date does not necessarily establish when a company began trading. However, OUTA believes these conflicting dates and experience claims should have prompted the Bid Evaluation Committee to conduct and record thorough verification before accepting the bid.
OUTA also searched the National Treasury eTender Publication Portal and other publicly available sources but found no information corroborating the claim that Resolutions Studio itself had delivered projects for four SETAs over six years.
“These were not minor administrative discrepancies,” says Rudie Heyneke, OUTA Senior Project Manager.
“The experience claimed by the bidder went directly to whether it met the tender requirements. Services SETA must explain how these claims were verified and why the contradictions in the bid did not prompt further scrutiny.”
Questions about the references
OUTA’s analysis found that reference letters supporting the bid were provided by Mark Phillip Roux, Dr George Chirwa and Thiru Mudaly, who were also listed as members of the core team proposed by Resolutions Studio.
OUTA believes these relationships should have been disclosed and considered when the references were evaluated.
Its examination of the electronic documents also found metadata indicating that Resolutions Studio director Ruqayya Dawood may have created or worked on files containing some of the reference letters. The provenance and authenticity of these documents should now be independently investigated.
“The purpose of a reference is to provide independent confirmation of a bidder’s previous performance,” says Heyneke.
“When references come from people who stand to participate in the proposed project, the evaluator should identify that relationship and conduct additional checks.”
Link to an earlier Services SETA contract
The Resolutions Studio bid also included a reference signed by Andile Nongogo, a former chief executive and chief financial officer of Services SETA who later served as chief executive of NSFAS.
The reference related to work performed by Falahmetrix Solutions (Pty) Ltd, another company associated with Dawood.
That earlier Services SETA contract was subsequently examined in an investigation conducted by Werksmans Attorneys. According to findings reviewed by OUTA, the original master service-level agreement was capped at approximately R47.4 million, while payments totalling approximately R94.6 million were ultimately processed.
OUTA believes the history of that contract should have prompted careful scrutiny before its use as a positive reference was accepted.
OUTA calls for investigation and accountability
OUTA will provide the relevant authorities with its investigation report and supporting evidence, including the bid documents obtained through PAIA, the reference letters and the available electronic metadata.
OUTA intends to:
- Refer the evidence to the appropriate law-enforcement agencies for investigation into possible fraud, forgery or related offences.
- Ask the Services SETA Administrator to investigate the award and consider supplier-restriction proceedings should any party be found to have submitted false or misleading information.
- Refer the findings to the Auditor-General of South Africa and request scrutiny of tender PROC T630 and related expenditure.
- Lodge complaints with the relevant professional bodies regarding the conduct of Thiru Mudaly, a chartered accountant and Certified Fraud Examiner who was included in the proposed project team and, in his capacity as a Commissioner of Oaths, certified team members’ documents – including his own certificates – and commissioned affidavits of Ruqayya Dawood, the Resolutions Studio director.
- Ask Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training to investigate the wider procurement relationships identified in OUTA’s report.
Any criminal, disciplinary or supplier-restriction process must be determined by the relevant authority following a fair and independent investigation.
“Money collected through the skills-development levy is intended to create opportunities and strengthen South Africa’s skills base,” says Heyneke.
“When procurement controls fail, young people, workers and contributing employers ultimately pay the price. The evidence must be independently investigated, the full procurement trail must be disclosed, and anyone found responsible for wrongdoing must be held accountable.”