Cinderella fraudster to know her fate soon

The sentencing proceeding in Boksburg’s Hildegard Steenkamp case, who was convicted of stealing over R500m, continued at the Johannesburg Commercial Crimes Court sitting in Palm Ridge on August 16.

State prosecutor advocate Tilas Chabalala concluded his cross-examination in aggravation of sentence.

Steenkamp, a 50-year-old resident of Cinderella, was recently convicted of embezzling R537m from her former employer, Medtronic (Pty) Ltd, where she was employed as an accountant.

One of her key roles as a junior accountant was to claim VAT refund on behalf of her employer. In defrauding the company of this amount, Steenkamp also defrauded SARS to the tune of R311m by submitting fraudulent VAT refund claims.

The sentencing proceeding began on August 14 with the State calling a forensic investigator, Graeme Dawes, to testify.

Dawes was part of the Deloitte team appointed in 2017 to carry out the forensic investigation into the fraud on behalf of Medtronic. In his testimony, the witness gave a detailed description of how the accused stole the money over 13 years, from 2004 to 2016, before she resigned and was arrested in 2018.

“The accused managed to set herself up as a beneficiary on the bank account of Medtronic – paying herself monies that purported to be either for customs clearing agents or for SARS itself,” said Dawes.

“You had R537m that made its way to the bank account of the accused and her deceased husband.”

Dawes testified that Steenkamp was able to claim as part of the claiming process and placed her bank accounts within those processes. As a result, SARS refunded a large portion of the money to the two accounts in question.

Steenkamp took the stand for cross-examination by her defence to testify in mitigation of her sentencing.

Prosecutor Chabalala started the cross-examination on August 14, but the hearing adjourned abruptly after Steenkamp complained of a sore throat.

The accused took the stand again on August 16 when the cross-examination resumed. During this cross-examination, Steenkamp made some concessions from her previous testimony and backtracked on some of the roles that she claimed her husband played in the thefts and managing the proceeds of the crimes.

When she testified on Monday, Steenkamp blamed her illegal activities on her late husband, who she portrayed as an abusive husband.

She told the court that her late husband, former police officer Mathys Johannes Steenkamp, forced her to commit the thefts to boost his unprofitable business ventures.

ALSO READ: Boksburg multi-million fraudster claims abusive husband forced her to do it

She testified that her husband would assault or threaten to hurt her and their children when she told him she wanted to stop stealing from her employer.

However, when she was cross-examined two days later, Steenkamp changed her tune when Chabalala presented evidence to disprove her claims.

Backtracking from her initial claims, the accused said while she still maintains that she and her late husband had good and bad times together, she is the one who came up with the idea to steal the money.

“I take full responsibility for the crimes because I’m the one who committed them and I feel very bad about it. I did it. I’m the guilty one, not my husband,” she said.

“I’m remorseful about what I did because it was a very stressful time that I had to go through in my life, walking around with this thing hanging over my head. It was stressful to go to work every day from 2004 to 2016 having to hide this.”

She also repeatedly told the court that she did not want to make herself look like an angel by talking bad about her late husband who is not there to defend himself.

Steenkamp conceded that she would always take her laptop with her even when going on holiday to hide her thefts.

She would arrive at work very early and leave late and always take her laptop with her as she feared someone might discover her crimes.

Luxury life
Chabalala told the court that the evidence presented shows that the accused enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle and spent a lot of money on gambling before she was arrested.

Steenkamp also admitted to stealing the money to live a life of luxury, enjoying overseas trips, and spending substantial amounts on a range of fashion items at high-end stores locally and overseas while also engaging in gambling.

Evidence presented showed that she had travelled on holiday to England, Dubai, Mauritius, France, Mozambique, Namibia and other destinations.

The court heard that she visited Dubai 11 times where she shopped at luxury stores for fashion items including clothing, handbags and jewellery.

On two separate occasions, Steenkamp spent over R26 000 and R24 000 on underwear at Victoria’s Secret store in Dubai. She also spent R73 000 on fashion items at Bloomingdale’s in Dubai in 2015.

Gambling
Records show that Steenkamp spent a lot of money on gambling at different local and overseas outlets.

At Emperor’s Palace, records show that over five years from the day of her arrest, she had lost R67.5m on gambling, which exceeds the amount that went directly to her personal bank account from Medtronic.

Steenkamp told the court that she was not the only one using the credit card as she and her husband would use each other’s credit cards for gambling and shopping.

She agreed that gambling was part of her life of luxury and was not about escaping from an ‘abusive’ relationship as she initially told the court.

Steenkamp had initially told the court that she was not in control of the stolen money, saying her late husband was in control and would only give her a living allowance ranging from R50 000 to R100 000.

However, the State presented evidence of the total amount she spent, which exceeds even the R11m that went directly into her personal bank account.

Arrest
Although it took Steenkamp more than five years to plead guilty to the 336 transactions related to the theft of the R537m, she said she felt relieved the day she was arrested because this meant she would no longer carry the burden.

When asked whether if no one had discovered her criminal behaviour, she would voluntarily have come forward, Steenkamp said: “I was very happy on the day when I was arrested because that took off the load of stress that I had to live with for the past 14 years. It was a relief. I wanted to come forward but it became harder and I was also afraid of being arrested.”

SARS
During the cross-examination, it was revealed that Steenkamp failed to disclose some of the items to the curator.
Information gathered also suggests that Steenkamp sold a restrained property unbeknownst to the State.

Steenkamp also agreed that her further unsuccessful attempts to fraudulently claim millions in VAT refund claims was her way of getting SARS out of pocket to repay or cover up her theft at Medtronics.

Chabalala asked Steenkamp why she wanted taxpayers to be the loser by defrauding SARS to cover up what she had stolen from Medtronic, and why she wanted taxpayers to lose because she was greedy.

She responded that she doesn’t think that she made taxpayers lose, stating the money she stole was money the company was supposed to receive back.

“I wasn’t wrong in doing that. Once more, I apologise for it,” she said.

Chabalala asked: “You were not aware that by submitting fraudulent VAT refunds you were making the poorest of the poor poorer?”

The case continues on October 16.