Tshwane official suspended for alleged R10m fraud
An employee from the City of Tshwane's Finance Department has been placed on suspension for alleged fraud.
According to the metro's spokesperson Selby Bokaba, an internal investigation had fingered the official and two of his colleagues for alleged involvement in fraud involving more than R10 million between May 2021 and January 2022.
Bokaba said the three employees were involved - and talks are at an advanced stage with the Asset Forfeiture Unit of the National Prosecution Authority to explore the possibility of freezing the trio’s assets.
“Two of the employees were also arrested by the police and granted bail of R10 000 each by the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court, a fortnight ago, but one of them could not post bail and is still in custody at Kgosi Mampuru Correctional Services. The third employee, who is in the law enforcement’s crosshairs, has been evading arrest through hospital admission after hearing that police were hot on his heels.”
Bokaba said the alleged graft was uncovered when Group Financial Services requested Group Audit & Risk (GAR) to conduct a probe after noticing suspicious inter-account transfers between municipal user accounts.
The probe revealed over 200 transactions that were made from various municipal user accounts into a ghost municipal account.”
“The modus operandi of the employees, which bore the hallmarks of a syndicate, involved
members of the public and city officials where employees would “wipe out” a user’s debit balance by transferring either a full amount or a portion thereof into the municipal account created by the same or related syndicate,” Bokaba added.
“The user would either be part of the syndicate whereby they pay an amount less than their debit balance to the city official in return for the wipeout or what the user may have intended paying.
“The employees would collect what the user had intended to pay and, instead of paying that amount into the city’s account, the user’s account was credited through the fraudulent transfer of the debit balance into the ghost account. They would then pocket the amount that the user had intended to pay.”
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