A part-time call centre agent and her sound engineer husband landed Tembisa Hospital contracts worth nearly R30m in the space of a month – part of a mammoth extraction network uncovered by murdered whistle-blower Babita Deokaran, reports News24.

Christine and Avikash Signarian each control five companies that saw a flurry of trade from the hospital, contracted to provide everything from ventilators to ICU beds.

Seventy payments to entities they own are among more than 1 000 ‘possibly fraudulent’ transactions flagged by Deokaran three weeks before she was assassinated.

Her call for a forensic probe into the hospital’s buying patterns were ignored and payments worth R850m are yet to be fully examined.

News24 says its investigation, drawing from thousands of Gauteng Department of Health emails, reveals that the couple’s companies are part of a larger network of shell corporations which exist only on paper.

Avikash Signarian has a close connection to Samendran Chin who himself, through five companies – formed on the same day with fake addresses – scored contracts worth nearly R8m.

Signarian and Chin were co-workers at the same company, Gresham Media.

The Signarians and Chin illegally sold medical equipment.

The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority has launched an investigation into the Tembisa Hospital saga.

Full News24 report

Meanwhile, the Gauteng Government says it is finalising the process of appointing an independent forensic investigator to look into allegations concerning the Deokaran matter.

She was gunned down in her driveway in August 2021.

A report in The Citizen notes the provincial government also revealed in a statement that outstanding labour matters relating to officials implicated in the case have been directed to the Head of Department of Health, Gauteng, to deal with them as per the Public Service Act and Public Finance Management Act.

Full report in The Citizen