Durban - Police have arrested two people in Pietermaritzburg who are alleged to be part of an elaborate government tender scam involving millions of rand.
Members of the police’s provincial task team swooped on the pair at the offices of the provincial Treasury on Thursday, a police source said.
The source said a man and a woman were linked to a housing tender scam. The pair were arrested and are in custody.
Provincial police spokesperson, Major Thulani Zwane, confirmed two people were being held by a provincial task team on Thursday in Pietermaritzburg.
“Yesterday the Provincial Task Team received information about a fraud syndicate operating in Pietermaritzburg.
“On arrival at the scene they found the two suspects, aged 37 and 58, in possession of fraudulent documents, money and computer stamps from Treasury and Human Settlements,” he said.
Zwane said the pair were expected to appear in court soon.
KwaZulu-Natal Department of Human Settlements spokesperson, Mbulelo Baloyi, said they were investigating 19 cases with a similar modus operandi.
He said the department became aware of the syndicate last year and the investigation - which included the Hawks - was continuing. He said the scheme included the usage of stamps from the national Department of Human Settlements, which would be used to trap people seeking to secure government tenders.
Using fraudulent documents that showed they had secured a tender but could not complete the work, they would tempt “tenderpreneurs” to pay up to R1m in bids for them to take over the work and complete it.
“We are aware that a member of the provincial legislature and some prominent councillors from the eThekwini Municipality are part of this scam as some of the victims have produced cellphone numbers and have told us that they were in meetings with the syndicate at the city hall or in boardrooms at the municipality,” he said.
Baloyi said the identities of the politicians could not be disclosed as the investigations were ongoing and arrests had not been made.
He said the municipality had been informed of the allegations.
The Daily News reported in October on a R900m tender that had been apparently awarded to a Pietermaritzburg businessman for the Shayamoya Housing Project in Kokstad. The businessman had received a supposedly leaked document that showed he had won the contract.
But Human Settlements MEC Ravi Pillay told the Daily News at the time that the businessman had been misled by the scam.
“The so-called letters of appointment are fake,” Pillay said at the time.
Daily News