Staff Reporter
A court order has frozen any sales of properties, including a block of flats in Bloemfontein, owned by a woman accused of swindling the provincial government out of more than R249 million.
On Wednesday, the Free State High Court granted the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) a restraining order against Lenah Mohapi, her business Superior Quality Trading and Seipati Sylvia Dhlamini, the former chief finance officer of the Free State Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Mohapi, 55, and Dhlamini, 49, were arrested in July last year following a joint investigation by the Hawks and overseen by prosecutors from the Specialised Commercial Crime Component as well as others from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in the Free State.
The AFU is a unit operating under the National Prosecuting Authority.
The two were jointly charged with Superior Quality Trading which also trades as Rekgonne Community Projects.
NPA national spokesperson Sipho Ngwema said in a statement a block of flats in Bloemfontein city centre as well as some movable property were among the assets covered by the order delivered on Wednesday.
The matter, according to Ngwema, was discovered during an analysis of the Estina Dairy Project financial flows a few years ago.
This case is however not linked to the well-publicised Estina matter.
It was discovered during those investigations that Dhlamini’s bank account had some irregular inflows disguised as refunds and other unclear payments coming from Mohapi’s company.
“It is alleged that the government officials gave a number of contracts to . . . Superior Quality Trading . . . even though this company did not attend any of the department’s compulsory briefing sessions,” said Ngwema in the statement.
“The company also had a certificate of attendance even though it was not present at the compulsory briefing where these certificates were issued,” he added.
Between 2012 and 2016, the department is said to have paid more than R244 million to the company.
“It is further alleged that the director of Superior Quality Trading, Mohapi, paid huge sums of money into the account of Dlamini, who was the chief financial officer of the department at the time,” he said.
“These payments were disguised as ‘Refund Telkomsa’ and ‘Medical services’.”
In September, the pair as well as the company were joined in court by the provincial head of department for agriculture, Mbana Thabethe, 54, as well as Lerato Mngomezulu, 39, Disebo Masiteng, 59, Mokemane Ndumo, 52, and Mahlomola Mofokeng, 55, all members of the department’s Bid Adjudication Committee.
They collectively face 54 counts of fraud, theft, forgery, uttering, fraud, corruption and money laundering to the value of R249 million.
They are all out on R10 000 bail.
2 Comments
The ANC President and RSA President is between the rock and hard place trying to sanitize his organization at the Commission.
Corrupt activities deny the ordinary South Africans an opportunity to make their lives worthwhile. Many job opportunities that they dream of disappear whether at municipal level and provincial level