This article may contain graphic and/or adult content unsuitable for minors and sensitive readers.
Eastern Cape premier Noxolo Kiviet says fraud is often a crime of opportunity by people who face overwhelming financial and other pressures.
In a speech prepared for delivery to an International Fraud Awareness Workshop in East London, Kiviet said they were not necessarily career criminals.
She said people had drifted away from honesty and selflesness in pursuit of material interests and pleasures.
Kiviet said the danger of this behaviour is that it is now growing at a fast pace and young people, who are the future of this country, are emulating it.
The premier said young people see the accumulation of wealth through tenders as the key to economic emancipation adding that they see their leaders following this route and flaunting their newly acquired wealth, and aspire to do the same by any means.
Kiviet said the Eastern Cape government had approved a policy that prohibited officials from trading with the state.
It is estimated that the Eastern Cape government loses about five percent or R3b of its budget to fraud.
