Cape Town: All but one of four former senior Kannaland Municipal managers who have been charged with fraud resulting in millions of rands for the local authority, are still employed at the municipality.
They appeared in the Kannaland Magistrates’ Court yesterday on charges of fraud and Contravention of the Municipal Finance Management Act.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) named the the four staff members as, former Human Resources Manager Mcgrandile Makier, Corporate Services Manager Hendrik Barnard, Municipal Manager Morne Hoogbaard and Chief Financial Officer Nigel Delo.
The State is set to prove that the group had defrauded the municipality via fraudulent employment of staff members, paying inflated salaries and overtime payments, and enhanced leave.
They are all charged under the Schedule 5 offence.
The accused were all granted R15 000 bail with strict bail conditions and ordered to hand over their travel documents, and to reside at their respective addresses and refrain from making contact with witnesses..
Eric Ntabazalia of the NPA said the matter was to be heard in the Oudshoorn Regional Court in January 2022: “Please note that four former Kannaland Municipal senior managers appeared at the Kannaland Magistrate’s Court this morning, charged with two counts of fraud and two counts of Contravention of the Municipal Finance Management Act.
Ntabazalia said that all accused who were part of the Kannaland Municipality were back in employment except for one person who was in the Eastern Cape.
“I can confirm though that all the accused except Delo are back in the employ of the Kannaland Municipality in various leadership positions. Delo is the CFO of the Blue Crane Route Municipality in Somerset East in the Eastern Cape,” he said.
Advocate Razia Valley-Omar for the State told the court the expenditure ran into the millions: “The accused are guilty of an offence in that as senior managers and as officials wrongfully, unlawfully and deliberately or in a grossly negligent way, failed to comply with a condition of their delegations in relation to irregular appointment of staff and irregular or fruitless and wasteful expenditure in the amount of R2,390,356.94 as detailed in further particularity the general preamble.”
Ntabazalia added Hoogbaard and Delo faced additional charges at another court relating to fraud: “Accused 3 and 4 are also facing charges of fraud at the George Regional Court which relates to claiming two salaries from the Eden Municipality and Kannaland Municipality.
“At some point they were seconded to Kannaland Municipality but continue dclaiming full salaries from both municipalities. Interestingly, the legal representative of accused 1 and 2 in today's bail application, Advocate Faried Stemet, was the Mayor of Eden District Municipality when that corruption occurred.
“As a result he is a witness in that case against accused 3 and 4. As a result his mandate today was limited to the bail application to avoid conflict of interest.”
Weekend Argus