Police have reopened investigations into an intricate BEE scheme involving Mercedes-Benz South Africa, which apparently left several Capetonians penniless, and which investigators now believe is being replicated in Gauteng.
The scheme was to have created opportunities in the transport industry for previously disadvantaged residents, but instead allegedly worked to scam them out of millions of rand.
It ran in Cape Town from 2007, but the repercussions are still being felt. And a private investigator believes it is now being replicated in other provinces, specifically Gauteng.
This week, Mercedes-Benz admitted to Saturday Star’s sister publication, Weekend Argus, that it had been approached by the police.
“The company acknowledges that a request was received from the SAPS to assist with information for a case, and we gave the assurance that we will co-operate at all times with the authorities in this matter,” it said in a statement.
A previous police investigation into the scheme collapsed, but the case was recently reopened.
This week, Mitchells Plain resident Nomsa Mtuzula, who says she fell victim to the scheme, told Weekend Argus she had fought the matter “for years” and that the fresh police probe had renewed her hope that she would finally be compensated.
“When I came into this, I had money to provide for and maintain my family and me. My name on the credit bureau was clean. I could pay all my debts.
“Today I am bankrupt. I don’t have money to feed my three dependent children,” she said.
The scheme involved previously disadvantaged people being financed to buy trucks, which would then be used in goods transport companies created for them.
But there are questions about whether contracts enabling them to finance the trucks were dished out simply to allow them to secure the financing, and whether the companies created for them were ever legitimate.
The initial investigation was closed due to insufficient evidence, but this week police spokesman Captain Frederick van Wyk confirmed that the case had been reopened two weeks ago.
Chad Thomas, of IRS Forensic Investigations, the company representing seven of the original 18 affected by the scheme, revealed that new information had surfaced recently.
“It would appear that the BEE vehicle finance scheme has been replicated in other parts of the country, leaving other owner/drivers/BEE operators financially broken,” he said.
Describing the workings of the scheme, Thomas said, “certain previously disadvantaged people wanted to become involved in the logistics and transport industry”.
They were told that Daimler Chrysler (under which Mercedes-Benz falls) was launching a BEE sales division.
Those people should then have been able to use business contracts, supplied by a transport broker company, to prove to finance houses that they were able to pay off a truck and trailer.
But Thomas alleged that the contracts were flawed.
Mtuzula explained that she gave up her job as a medical technologist eight years ago to pursue a career in the transport industry.
She found out that to buy a truck and trailer on credit, she would need to prove she could pay it off.
At a Mercedes-Benz branch in Cape Town she met a representative who said a BEE scheme was being developed. He referred her to a transport broker company, which was willing to help her.
“They told me that they are going to be responsible for day-to-day management of my company.
“The upfront administration fee was R2 500, which covered registering my company (and the) processing of credit finance with Daimler Chrysler Financial Services, also known as Mercedes-Benz Financial Services,” Mtuzula said.
Her truck would deliver frozen goods all over South Africa and to Namibia.
In January 2008 the truck and trailer started making deliveries, but Mtuzula said that neither she, nor others who signed up for the scheme, made any money.
Meanwhile, Mtuzula was struggling to pay the R49 000 monthly instalment for the truck. She tried using money from a travel agency she ran in the Eastern Cape to pay.
“But that money dried up so I closed the travel agency business,” she said.
“On May 6, 2009, the truck and trailer were repossessed… They were auctioned without me being told. I was just sent a registered letter informing me of the difference I must pay, R1.67million, for both the truck and trailer accounts.”
Mtuzula, who is now interning at a local estate agency, said her only source of income was from a home she owned in the Eastern Cape, which she was renting out.
She said she had worked with a number of attorneys over the years to try to secure compensation, and had recently approached another lawyer.
“I want my money back,” the desperate woman said.
A source close to the Gauteng arm of the investigation said a similar scheme appeared to be running in that province, because some people who wanted to get involved in the transport industry were being granted finance before officially applying for it.
Saturday Star