A married couple who allegedly embezzled more than R6.6m meant for youth development were hauled before the court on charges of fraud and corruption on Monday.
Bathandwa and Nande Matinkca, who were employed as an administrative and learner support officer and a document controller, respectively, appeared in the Gqeberha commercial crimes court on Monday.
It is alleged they fraudulently enriched themselves by paying learner stipends from various Coega Development Corporation (CDC) skills development programmes into their bank accounts.
The crimes were allegedly committed over a period of eight years.
The CDC offers various training programmes for students, who receive a monthly stipend for the duration of the programme.
Payment of the stipends to the qualifying students was outsourced to service providers (wage bureaus), who prepared the payroll reports and paid the stipends into the qualifying students’ bank accounts on behalf of the CDC.
The information on the qualifying students was provided to the wage bureaus by the CDC every month.
For the period March 1 2013 to December 2015, Empvest Outsourcing (Pty) Ltd was the service provider.
CRS Technologies took over between March 1 2016 and February 28 2021.
According to the charge sheet, Bathandwa was tasked to prepare the list of names of qualifying students with their banking details for payment purposes.
However, he allegedly fraudulently replaced learner bank accounts with his and his wife’s.
The fraudulent payments were made in respect of former or non-existent, “ghost” students and paid into nine different bank accounts registered in the names of both accused, held at various banks.
According to the payroll reports, a total of R6,642,420.70 was paid into the accused’s bank accounts.
This included stipend payments made through Empvest and CRS.
The state alleges that 91% of the fraudulent payments occurred while CRS was handling the payroll.
The rest of the fraudulent payments occurred during the Empvest era.
Of the total amount of R6.6m, more than R2m was paid into Nande’s Capitec bank account.
The two are accused of acting with a common goal to enrich themselves at the expense of the CDC.
After being charged, the Matinkcas were released on bail of R10,000 each.
As part of their bail conditions, they must hand in their passports and report to a police station before setting foot out of Mthatha.
They allegedly sold their house in Gqeberha and moved to Mthatha but could not evade a Hawks’ serious commercial crime unit investigation team, who managed to trace and serve them with a summons to appear in the court.
Coega reported the matter to the Hawks in 2021 after discovering numerous inconsistencies.
The accused will appear in court again on July 13.
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