THE DEPARTMENT of Trade and Industry (DTI) offered Valor IT a settlement that was accepted by chairman Josias Molele, in a long-running dispute over a canned tender.
This comes after judges in the North Gauteng High Court ordered the parties to meet and settle the dispute over the cancelled contract - a R153 million deal - awarded to Valor IT.
The contract was to implement an electronic content management (ECM) system at the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro) and was canned earlier this year by trade and industry minister Rob Davies. This was due to a forensic report, which was completed in March, indicating tender irregularities in the awarding of the deal.
Valor IT took legal action to force the department to uphold the contract to complete an overhaul of Cipro's legacy IT systems.
The forensic report also resulted in Cipro's CEO Keith Sendwe and CIO Michael Twum-Dwarko being suspended. In May, Davies announced the pair would be charged, but Sendwe has since died and Twum-Dwarko is still waiting for a hearing date to be set.
Molele said that the parties had negotiated a settlement agreement. He would not disclose the amount he accepted from the DTI, saying the agreement is confidential. He adds, however, that it is "not a small figure".
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