you have interactions with them. i was the only guy doing the 1st flight. there were 3 of us. the other 2 yury militia, one good. now the circle of a bullets were, had already flown into space. so there was that sense of comfort with them. and up and i think all in all, it was a, it was already a fruitful interaction. they did the mentoring and there was no problem whatsoever. would you like to return to think i would, yes. ah, i would. what i would like to return as a tourist isn't being that space is such an expense select to with you that when i was there last, each minute of the space flight was one,

had to do something or the other to make the flight productive. so there was no time really to pressure knowles against the window and look at the way go by. so i don't mind going back again. but as a tourist, what are your 1st thoughts when you realize that you were actually in faith? it was absolutely stunning. of course, by that time, i would say gotten, went up in the sea early sixty's and the americans followed that often. so there was a lot of material already in the media in terms of photographs and things. so one really knew what to expect and never color photographs. but when you actually go up there, and the expediency i would say the and white and one, you know,

you're floating all the time. something you're not used to. and the visuals are absolutely stunning. and it, it's, you know, very impactful we at the scale on which things are kinda, i would say that that gives you a wider perspective of your own existence or continue to bring you more of our special coverage of ration, cosmetic, stay by the hour for more news and video on what's a bob t dot com online and on there we've got you covered and that's all for now. we'll see you next time. ah ah

ah. 2 2 imagine that you're recruited to begin working in a job that you've always aspired to you begin that job and almost immediately realize not only that the company you're working for is involved in illegal activities, but that the legality reaches all the way to the top of the government, do you remain silent, or is it time to blow the whistle? i'm john kerry aku welcome to the whistleblowers. 2 2 south africa as detailed investigation into high level corruption,

started in 2016 when the independent public prosecutor's office published a report entitled state of capture and strongly recommended that a full scale inquiry follow. at the start of 2016 bianca goodson had been head hunted to lead the management division of a south african financial advisory firm, called trillion capital by the time goods and left her job. just 3 months later, she was well aware that her employer was right in the center of the original state capture allegations. she also realized that what she knew about trillions relations with the influential grouped brothers and state owned enterprises in south africa would be of enormous value to investigators. trillion was owned by salam isa, a close associate of the powerful grouped family. the group does had extensive business interests in south africa and used their relationship with the former president, jacob summa, and his family to secure shady government contracts, and to exert influence on the workings of the government. goodson realised that her

company was winning, highly lucrative government consulting work, thanks to e, says connections, but doing very little work to earn the massively inflated fees. what she knew could corroborate what other whistleblowers had reported to the public prosecutor and would deepen the public's understanding of how deep the rot went. bianca did testify before the public prosecutor, whose report appeared in october of that year in 2017 after the release of the so called group to leaks a large collection of e mails to the south. african media bianca stepped back into the fire and made an external disclosure by releasing a public statement with supporting documents her statement, detailed how trillion would secure government work, pass it on to internationally recognized companies and then pocket half of the proceeds. through this business model, the company raked in almost 600000000 rand, within a short space of time, while barely lifting

a finger one particularly lucrative deal, that fortunately, never canyon earned the astronomical sum of 4400000000 ran. that's about $255000000.00 us dollars. in advisory fees for a consulting contract that the professional services for mckinsey had, with the state owned energy company, s com, effectively extracting resources from the south african state. the trillion transactions are currently the subject of various fraud corruption and money laundering investigations and prosecutions in south africa to which good since evidence and disclosures continue to make an important contribution. bianca goodson . welcome to the show. we're so happy to have you, bianca, your whistle blowing seems to have happened in a short period of time almost immediately after you started a new job. take us back to that period. you've just begun this new position. you spend your 1st weeks and months easing into the job and then what happened, what did you see? and then somebody asked me to open up a bank accounts with

a bank that, that doesn't have appraisal south africa. so the bank called the bank of the road and it was not the main transactional accounts of, of the he that i was looking for. and then in between all the papers, when i had to sign over the account, i was led to an affidavit basically saying that ive opened his account, the 100000000 rand. i'm with drop activity, but i'm getting all the rights that account over to someone else. but i don't know, that was the one, the one warning flag. and the other warning flag was the fact that the company that they just started it was, it was 3 months old, had secured work in the value of him in south africa. now in my limited understanding of companies know, companies that lucky and it worked with the states, right. so it wasn't like private take to work or, or anything like that, or just look at the states to him. 1000000000 rent in 3 years. and i just,

i mean there was everything in my head was just saying, this is not normal. the just not average am on water. the i, yes, more fortunately, i think, you know, inside i resigned and i resigned based on suspicion at the time. and it was 18 months later that i probably could do the whistle because then it became clear to me through the work that i went to get a journalist of africa that the company that i worked for was, was embroiled in this really hit tick ploy. and elaborate money laundering scheme to basically spill money from states. and that's why i blew the whistle, but yes, i only worked for 3 months and i resigned 3 months into my job, but the shortest employment in you have any my life. so many of us who are whistleblower struggle in the beginning we think should i say something? should i wait for somebody else to say something?

should i say something anonymously? to protect myself? maybe i should hire an attorney. what was your thought process here? all of those things, plus some, just the more all of those things i at the time i was married. so the 1st person i spoke to as my husband. and you know, when the news articles have come out about, about this entity and these people that i was working with, i read to my husband and i would say to him, look, i need to do something. i need to speak to someone about those. i think it may be that the information that i have could be useful. my husband at the time was absolutely adamant. he said look, just put your head down and just move on. if your life don't cause a scene, just just be grateful that you left. find that job, let's just move on. my husband is that drama escalated to the fact that we actually had fights about it. when journalists call me and he would see that

a journalist called me on my phone or you would, you know me onto the phone from that a private number. and then i find out that there were a journalist like that. i mean, he started actually, physically using me, that is of my husband. i spoke to my mother and my father, they just cried because they, they didn't know what to say they, they just, they, they posted the, they just, if you can pray for you. and i spoke to my post is from the church, and the posters in the church told me to not do anything. i spoke to numerous attorneys, who, i mean what it's the, she's the one advice the one bit of advice that i got from one of the attorneys was actually quite funny. 9 hines, i just did that. i leave my computer in my call and place of tongue and allow my car to accidentally get broken into and my laptop stolen. i mean we, we have all these options. the one option that we couldn't do at the time though, was approach law enforcement agencies in south africa because the speculation at

the time which turned out to be true was that law enforcement was captured. so that's, we call it the n p a, which i think is the equivalent in america of the f b i we, i couldn't approach any, couldn't go to any cop police stations. i couldn't do anything like that. so eventually i got so tired of lawyers and people around me telling me that i should do nothing when i knew that i had to. so i threaten them. actually, i told them i said, if you guys don't help me, and i said this to the organization that was helping me, it's an organization called plus and i approached another organization called corruption watch. and i said, if you guys don't help me, i will do this on my own. i will create my own website. i will put my own data on my own website. i will do it myself. and eventually, plus conceded,

they didn't think or is the best decision for me. but, but it was one of the biggest data breakthroughs that we have in fact capture. because often my whistle blowing a lot more whistleblowers came forward. and l investigative journalist at the time were able to use the information that i made public together with other data leaks start pitching this or putting together this picture of what 5 africa core they capture. we effectively, our president at the time was the, was losing the state with, with a network of people and he was lifting it. so it was important that i did it but, but there was, there was nobody where encourage me to do it. eventually. my mom did my mom saw how the killing me such with this information and not doing anything. and my mom eventually supported me, but it was under the thing of don't tell dad was just telling me we need to know because dad will tell you not to do it. you know, do is it was,

it wasn't the best experience, john. unfortunately, less than a year after starting your job, you found yourself testifying before the public prosecutor and taking on some very powerful people. were you worried about the fall out as you were testifying? were you thinking about not only the rest of your career but also about your personal safety? i couldn't get away from that. my, at the time when i made the public protect it, my daughter was 4 years old laughing all 3 is all she was very yeah. that's my point. and the public protect to felt that i needed i needed safety. my public protect wants to give me a call because i was in the throes of a divorce. but my ex husband had done is he, he didn't say that i put my daughter's life at risk because i was making myself a target. and by pretty my daughter's life at risk and he and also my last address

. i wasn't them. so while i was busy testifying and trying to expose the state capture bizarrely, i didn't, i wasn't afraid of, of these sort of big guys with these big guns that i was taking down. i was actually afraid of my husband because he was with me because to be so it was a very difficult part at the time. i felt confident in the guys that i was indicating because i had data, i had a copy of my computer and everything that i was saying in the legation that i was made that i was making will all backed up by evidence. so i knew that the was, they could do was sort of tony's my reputation into but it was me a campaign which they did. and that's it. to me, it wasn't. didn't even come close in comparison to me having to defend me that i was a good mother, people in the country calling a hero that i was in family court,

trying to, you know, save my daughter am. so it was very difficult time. after the release of the group, the leak females, you went public with even more documents proving crimes committed by trillion. that took unusual courage and frankly. ready kept the story in the news to the point that even if the authorities wanted it to go away or wanted to cover it up, they couldn't. it was your 2nd round of revelations that kept the pressure on the government to continue what turned out to be a deep criminal investigation? was that your calculation? yeah, so look at just a personal thing. i'm. i'm a day to day. and what i loved about the information that i made public was that the me today to had all been preserved in the way that i made copies. i imaged my computer before, i left trillion. and what i knew i could do was explain to anyone who was reasonable and logical and wanted to listen on a website without any restrictions i. i didn't want at the time,

there was so many smear campaigns happening against people that are speaking against a capture. i didn't want anyone to say that i'm only allowing a few elite access to my data and so forth. i an indiscriminately made it public to everyone, right? so that i could prevent those kind of smear campaigns coming that you know that i had a different agenda. so i could have been criticized. and i could also be recognized for what i was trying to do. and i was prepared to take them equal proportions. bianca, stay with us. we're speaking with south africa. whistleblower bianca. good sin about financial corruption in south africa. we have a lot more to ask her, but we're going to take a short break. so stay tuned. ah. 2 2 2 2 ah,

a, in a shorter one, i'm not trying to stay like a national z. m a not buy mia. l look forward to talking to you all. that technology should work for people. a robot must obey the orders given by human beings, except where such order is a conflict with the 1st law show your identification. we should be very careful

about our personal intelligence. the point obviously is to great trust rather than fear with take on various job with artificial intelligence, real summoning with a robot most protective phone existence with. 2 0, well, come back to the whistle blowers. i'm john korea. we're speaking with south african whistle blower, bianca goodson. good to have you with us, bianca, bianca, the impact of your revelations? can't be understated in south africa. you exposed one of the biggest financial scandals in the country's history. you did it virtually single handedly. you did it at great cost to yourself and your family. tell us what the government has done in

response to your whistle blowing. that might ensure that corruption, like this doesn't happen again. well, the 2 had to be in that regard. i mean, these sort of the personal have to let me talk to that because it's a bit easier. regrettably, the legislation, our country and the leaders in our country haven't really done much to support. no, protests, whistleblowers. so from, from that perspective, i mean, there's a lot of statements that have been made in us. our president said, yeah, with will does look be protective and stuff, but nothing's really happened in that regard. and that's what's been very, very unfortunate. how even from a digital perspective they have, they has been some progress. so with all the revelations of the capture, what had happened was it was the presidential commission that is pretty place people commonly call it the under commission. but the correct name is the state capture commission of inquiry and then rang for about 3 years. and it was a really detailed investigation into all the allegations of state capture and the

findings which have not been released have found that it was in fact so capture and recommendations go as far as criminal actions towards those implicated and so forth . but in addition to the recommend, in addition to those top recommendations, they also recommendations for legislation to change to protect whistleblowers. regrettably, i think is that africa, though it's sort of like the wheels of justice, just take a really long time to turn. and so they haven't really been like a lot of tangible changes towards whistleblowers except on even this commission that came out was it was televised and it was line. right. so, so all the stuff and all the allegations that were made will all brought out in, in a formal, judicial inquiry. so, so the people implicated really but no place to hide anymore. and so that is a good thing. i think that that was a when i take it as a, when in many countries around the world in response to high level whistle blowing like yours, governments often respond with legislation to either correct the deficiencies and

the legal code or to strengthen the position of the whistle blower has that happened in your case, has the south african government moved to clamp down on corruption or to protect whistleblowers through improved legislation? unfortunately, not then no legislation changes every night with lois know. and so all the support whistleblowers get at the moment is like maybe from india and bizarrely not even in jazz bases of africa, foreign india. and so now it's, it's really regrettable but there's absolutely no support. no protection for whistle blows in south africa and, and i really wish that that was different and maybe my lifetime it will, it will change. but at the moment nothing's moved on that am they've been like i said, they've been a few recommendations from the judicial inquiry. there's been a few really prominent members of leadership and government that have made very stan statements towards the protection of whistleblowers. but the nothing is

actually being communicated that it's actually even in the works, have been drafted for example. so that's, that's quite irritable on the whistle blow side on the clamping on him for corruption side. i mean, i've been told, i don't know this because, i mean, i don't compare legislations across countries, but piece of africa. so after, because good luck. some really good legislation, right. we've got the public on new management act. we've got so many different s, the crammed down on corruption, but the problem is the people that basically are empowered actually needs inflation . so what being really said is that they haven't necessarily been changes to legislation to come back to because alley depression. pretty good. what they do though, is that even with findings that it was kimberly to see. and if certain contracts have been taken to court and painted as corrupt and fruitful, fruitless, and weights baseball and so forth. no, actually been taking the taken against the cues until just recently i'm at the

moment. the good is all in bloom, france, i and one of the cities in south of job it for one corruption case, not not, not even the big one. strike, not even the ones that amount. billions, i'm the one to thing. couple of 1000000 but it's taking a really long time to even just act against those implicated. 6 so i think, i think there's just a process of africa needs to go through. i think we need to use the good registration that we have to hold those who are guilty to account. and then i think we need to maybe reconsider legislation which, which they've been word on. and if they don't be great to protect whistleblowers, so they just really haven't been a lot of action. and it's quite taught me. i'm very interested to know what the public reaction was here, whistle blowing clearly we would expect you to be celebrated. you provided an important public service. you should be honored with the wards and flattering press coverage, but i'm guessing that none of that happened. tell us about the public reaction to

your testimony and to your later release of additional documents. bizarrely actually was quite positive. so if you sort of look at your average citizen and my barometer, that is the feedback that my parents to see, for example, that was all very positive. so there was a lot of praise. there was a lot of you, very brave you hero. there was a lot of accolades didn't to that extent from just the general public from anybody in position of leadership. no. that's that was, that was that's maybe a bit said, but listen, i mean, i didn't do it. i did to get praise or anything like that. and of course, the was affection a significant section that that, that obviously wasn't campaigned bribe, they were people that say that i, you know, i had all these, even the changes that i was disgruntled employee, that i was in it for the money that i must have been completed and that i'm just covering my, you know, that i thought they were a lot of people that are very particular to that were quite naughty am.

but i mean, each manage that you just, you just delete, you know, and you just don't even use. so, so the probably was a lot more than i saw, i just chose not to sort of focus on the negative stuff. and then my parents will some of it, my husband read all of it. am but overall, the consistent message now that it's been a couple of years later has been that my, if it's appreciated and valued and that's just sort of like from general sort of populations. so for example, my name is think that i'm awesome. you know, and people in industry, people in leadership positions in politics, haven't quite got the same response from them though. but that's ok. that's ok. blowing the whistle has taken a heavy toll on you like it does with many whistle blowers. you found a new job after leaving trillion, but you had to move on after going public. in an interview in 2021. you said

becoming a whistleblower had led to the end of your marriage and had made you virtually unemployable forcing you to rely on your elderly parents to survive. i'm truly sorry to hear that. but despite the cost of your actions, you said in 2017, that you did not regret going public. if anything, you said you should have come forward earlier. why do you feel that way? having paid such an enormous cost? i mean, i was, i was a bit naive, i guess, and i did leather whistle because i didn't anticipate that people that i love who just on the way they did, i didn't anticipate not being employable. i mean, it's still just confuses me now because my skill has not changed in any way. my ability to add value to an organization hasn't changed. and yet finding a job is the most impossible thing. trying to find the point of gold at the end of a rainbow. it's impossible. you know, so yeah,

i didn't sort of will see these consequences in i didn't know the whistle, so i so i'll do to gain my case. i mean, if i knew what i know now, i would maybe try and be a little bit more calculated about it. but soul, when i think about it is i wouldn't have been the person that got the left of stolen out of my car because my evidence can be more white with me standing behind it and me been able rights and f, a david and say this is what happened and say that this is the person that gave you the instruction and so forth. you know, so, so i would do it again because i do love the country very much. i don't know the south africa. i don't want to be like one of these people existing in, you know, going to live in australia or canada, anything like that? nope. in senior places, but, you know, i, i really love living. yeah. and i think i've got a lot offer. and i love that my daughter loves the country and is born here. my, all my family are here. i want to stay here and i want to see this country drive really considered south africa and the commodities that we have,

the potential that we have. there's no reason why we shouldn't be a well country and i'd like to sort of help towards that in a little bit, which is where i can. and if that means indian corruption for the resources go to places where they need to go, then i'll do that. am. yeah, the consequences have been degradable am. yeah, but, but i mean, what else do you do? i can tell you this is no way that i could have lived with this of my conscience. i, i couldn't do that. that's that wasn't even an option. bianca goodson, thank you so much for joining us. corruption is a cancer, a cancer that eats away at a citizens faith and democracy, it diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity. it squeezes already tight . national budgets crowding out important national investments. it waste the talent of entire generations. it scares away investments and jobs. that's why we need

whistleblowers. thanks for joining us for another episode of the whistleblowers. i'm john kerry aku, and we'll see you next time. ah. 2 2 2 2 2 ah ah ah.