Cape Town - Parliament's financial watchdog, the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), will ask the auditor-general to conduct a forensic audit of the contract to produce the credit card driving licences.
The contract was issued in 1998 to Prodiba, one-third of which was owned by Schabir Shaik, who has been convicted of fraud and bribery. Another one-third is owned by Thomson CSF, the French arms firm, named in the case against him. Denel owns the remainder.
The contract was renewed five years later for a further five years, but a report adopted by Scopa yesterday condemns the fact that the renewal was done without proper authorisation from either the director-general or the minister of transport, or the national treasury.
The committee report says members are aware that the treasury "post facto" approved it, but yesterday they declared that they intended to press treasury officials about this when they appeared before the committee later this month.
Although the Scopa report does not mention the criminal audit, ANC MP Pierre Gerber promised to the general agreement of other members: "We shall seek a forensic audit of this contract from the very beginning."
The committee report, which will be presented to the national assembly later this month for endorsement, also notes that the department of transport did not make proper recordings of transactions that took place, there was no disclosure in the transport department's financial statements and the department did not ensure that invoices submitted by Prodiba were properly checked and authorised.
The contract was estimated to be worth R650 million.
When it was first announced, Prodiba agreed to finance the capital costs of the credit card format system, which amounted to R265 million. Approximately R40 of the fee paid by licence applicants is paid to Prodiba and it was expected that the firm would recover its investment over five years.
In June the director-general of transport, Mpumi Mpofu, told Scopa that the department was considering renegotiating the deal.
Mpofu told MPs that she has had to manage the issue carefully, in part because of the legal implications and because of that portion of the contract held by the Denel subsidiary, which was not involved in the Shaik case.
She added that one of the problems they faced was to keep the system operational while such a changeover would take place, so as not to interrupt the delivery of driving licences.
She told the committee that she would expect to see the matter resolved within the next six months.