Johannesburg - One of the alleged masterminds behind Joburg’s biggest electricity-rigging syndicate, which defrauded the city of R200 million, ran a clandestine “mini council” from home, complete with job cards for “council engineers” to carry out maintenance.
Investigators also found pre-termination notices for electricity, forged council bills and water metering documents allegedly used in acts of collusion and corruption to defraud the city.
Job cards are issued to city contractors and its engineers, while pre-termination notices may be issued only to residents who have failed to pay for services.
The modus operandi used in the fraud scheme is said to have included changing the database to reflect properties – both business and residential – as using prepaid meters whereas they had conventional meters.
Next week, Alwyn Kingma, aka Calla Botha, is to appear in the Johannesburg Specialised Commercial Crimes Court to face a series of charges, including fraud.
He was arrested earlier this month at his home, and was subsequently released on R5 000 bail.
He is one of 40 people arrested to date, and is accused of having helped residents and businesses for years to manipulate and bypass the council’s billing system.
He allegedly approached some businesses and landlords, offering to help them reduce their electricity consumption levels by installing bypassed pre-paid meters.
Authorities described to the Saturday Star this week how computers and many documents seized from Kingma’s home showed that he allegedly ran “his own council from home”.
A source close to the investigation said; “With the documents he had, including pre-termination notices, we believe he could have gone out and forced people to pay him money by claiming that he would cut off their service.”
Officials said they suspected that Kingma had worked with other council staff internally to effect the bypassing and manipulation of electricity meters.
Last year, Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Pravin Gordhan raised alarm in his Budget vote speech about collusion and corruption that had defrauded Joburg of rates and taxes.
He said city officials were colluding with residents in a scheme to dodge the payment of water and power bills.
This, he added, resulted in other customers getting inflated bills, as meters were being manipulated.
The City of Joburg has been grappling with a billing and revenue collection crisis for years.
This week authorities said the arrest of one member of the syndicate who has now turned a state witness has helped to unravel the chain of events and kingpins behind it.
A forensic report compiled by investigators has fingered a number of high end northern suburb car dealerships, landlords of complexes, real estates and shopping centres in the collusion chain.
It found that some large power users did not even have electricity included in their municipal accounts and others simply had meter removed on the system to avoid consumption monitoring.
One Randburg landlord whom investigators are after but cannot be named until his arrest, allegedly worked with Kingma to connect his two storey complex, considered a large power user, directly to the grid, bypassing metering for years.
“The property has tenants who pay monthly electricity to the owner but he has never paid a cent to the city,” said our source. “When we checked the property, the owner does in fact have an account with the city but it reflects a credit balance of over R200 000 we owe him despite he never paid the city in over five years.” This property is estimated to owe more than R1.3 million in unpaid electricity but this does not include all the years covered by the investigation.
Another large power user – a major car dealership allegedly linked to Kingma – also under investigation, officials found that a conventional meter installed in the property had not been vending since 2006 but continued to receive power without payment.
Officials said stolen electricity meters formed crucial part of the syndicate’s web of deceit of the system to make people avoid paying.
“We found in some areas meters and when you check them in the system they were stolen somewhere yet they are running up a bill in another place,” said the source. “It is an organised thing and it works like puzzle with pieces coming together.”
Council spokesman Nthatise Modingoane said the city began with arrests of its own staff but now it was moving to large power users and residents involved in the scheme.
“As more details emerge others will be added to the list,” he said. “We are going to be intensify our efforts working with the police and the National Prosecuting Authority.”
Saturday Star