FREE STATE-Six municipal officials and two company directors appeared before the Ficksburg Magistrate Court on Friday, 30 April 2021 where they were facing charges of fraud, forgery and uttering. They were arrested in the early hours of this morning by the Hawks Serious Commercial Crime in Bethlehem.
Among the officials who were arrested are: Senzo Kunene(33), Asanda Nontsimi(38), Flory Monamola(36), Gubevu Albert Maduna(35), Johny Edward Lynch(51), Nkosinathi Victor Ngezi(32) and Lawrence Tshikovha(39) a director of TML Civils along with Lesite Patrick Tsoaela(53) who is also director of TML Civils.
Their arrests emanate from an incident which took place between the period of October 2018 to November 2018 where the six municipal officials were members of the Bid Evaluation Committee(BEC) and did not evaluate documents properly that were submitted at Setsoto Local Municipality for toilet infrastructure. The company TML Civils through its directors submitted fraudulent documents for tender. The BEC committee recommended the same company to be awarded the tender worth R25 million even though their papers were fraudulent.
The unsigned award letter was emailed to TML Civils. A preliminary probe that was conducted by the municipal manager discovered that the recommended company submitted false documents.
The matter was then reported to the police and a case was handed over to the Hawks Serious Commercial Crime Investigation in Bethlehem for further investigation which led to arrests of 8 suspects and their first appearance in court.
The case against the eight suspects has been postponed to Friday,11 June 2021 for further investigations. The suspects are out on a R2000 bail each.