Competition Commission boss Shan Ramburuth spent tens of thousands of rands of taxpayers’ money in one month watching and downloading pornography.
Ramburuth, who oversaw significant mergers such as Walmart and Massmart as well as investigations into anti-competitive practices in the construction sector, spent an average of R15 000 an hour on a government SIM card, some of it on hardcore porn.
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This is in direct contravention of the Competition Commission’s Internet policy, which forbids users to visit sites that show “any form of violence, pornography, explicit nudity sexual acts, gross depictions”.
Less than a day after the Sunday Times sent questions to the Department of Economic Development about Ramburuth’s porn habits, it was announced that he had resigned.
The details of Ramburuth’s pornographic activities are contained in a forensic report conducted by consultants Paul O’Sullivan and Associates. The report was handed to Patel’s office last month.
According to the report, Ramburuth visited 25 pornographic sites between August and November 2011.
In October of that year, Ramburuth clocked up a R123 000 data bill while overseas, using a government-issued SIM card . The single largest data usage was on October 15 , when he spent 291 minutes (just less than five hours) on pornographic websites.
On other days, Ramburuth started porn-surfing at noon and ended after 6pm. On October 6 he spent 156 minutes, or two and a half hours, on one website.
The report says Ramburuth visited “inappropriate sites which were of an explicit pornographic nature”.
A letter signed by Patel’s director-general, Jenny Schreiner, last month demands that Ramburuth hand over his government-issued laptop and iPad for further investigations into “excessive expenditure in respect of data usage”. It is understood that his iPad was seized by investigators.
According to the report, the October 2011 invoice recorded an amount of R107 683 for “roamed calls”, but since it “was a data card, ‘calls’ is actually data”.
“The possible conclusion to be drawn is that the extremely high billing is due to inappropriate sites being accessed whilst the card was overseas and the downloading of the content therefrom …
“Occasional use of the card whilst overseas could not have resulted in such a high charge, unless [Ramburuth] was downloading significant amounts of data,” says the report. It adds that an examination of the computer used would be necessary to determine the duration and volume of downloads.
“[Ramburuth] therefore spent an average of R4 726.93 per day, based on 26 days [he spent] overseas, or R15 172.88 per hour based on assumed download time [of 8.2 hours while overseas].”
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