PRETORIA – A Project Manager, four contractors and two companies will appear in the Butterworth Magistrate Court on Friday for alleged fraud, theft, corruption and money laundering.
Three out of the five suspects aged between 69 and 38 were arrested in an early morning blitz on Friday by Hawks Serious Corruption Investigation teams. The other two it is reported that they are in quarantine in Gauteng and Cape Town respectively. It is expected they will send their legal teams in court to represent them.
The Mnquma Local Municipality issued an advert inviting bidders for the preparation of preliminary designs of Ngqamakwe town internal street surfacing in August 2013.
HMP Africa and CWZ Matoti & Associates were appointed as the Consulting engineers for the designs and project implementation. Furthermore, Soyama Construction and Luqaqambo Civil Construction were subsequently appointed for the construction of the street surfacing in August 2013 as well.
It was found that the workmanship was substandard and poor. The municipal officials signed payments certificates to four companies all of whom had formed joint ventures for services that were not rendered.
The Hawks were roped to investigate and found that more R9.1 million, the available project budget, was lost by the municipality. The investigation further revealed that there was also an over expenditure of R982 000 which was charged against the municipality.
The Project Manager allegedly signed off all the invoices and the service provides pocketed millions for work not done.
