Man faces jail time for defrauding Pretoria SANDF member of UIF/Ters money

A Zimbabwean national, who collected fraudulent Covid-19 Ters funds meant to assist a Pretoria SANDF employee, was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and deportation.

Admirer Sibanda collected the payments between March 2020 and April 2021.

Sibanda was sentenced at the East London magistrate’s court on February 27.

He will be deported by home affairs to his country of origin, Zimbabwe, after his prison sentence.

He was arrested by the police in December 2022 in East London.

Kaizer Kganyago, of the special investigating unit (SIU), said they welcomed Sibanda’s sentencing on fraud and identity theft charges.

This was after the unit investigated Ters payments to persons not entitled to payments who submitted false, irregular, invalid or defective applications to the UIF.

The unit referred evidence on the case to the NPA for further action after Sibanda confessed to defrauding the Pretoria SANDF employee.

Sibanda used SANDF member Betwel Juwele’s personal details to commit fraud.

“Our investigations found that a certain Juwele applied through his employer, Multi-Rect Construction, to the UIF and claimed UIF Ters during the national state of disaster.

“The bank statement and Multi-Rect Construction payment report showed that Juwele received Ters payments between March 2020 and April 2021,” said Kganyago.

He said the SIU stumbled on the case when an identity document with the same names and ID number was used to apply for Ters after it was used by an SANDF employee.

“This prompted our investigation.

“The real Juwele, who is based in Pretoria, uses a smart card, while Sibanda used Juwele’s ID book to apply for Ters in East London.”

During the investigation, Juwele stated that he never worked for Multi-Rect Construction.

The arrest comes after the Department of Employment and Labour deployed more than 360 auditors to visit employers as part of phase 2 of its Follow-the-Money project in December.

The project was started in July 2022.

The department is set to brief the public on March 14 on matters related to Ters fraud cases and phase 2 of the project.

UIF Commissioner Teboho Maruping said the forensic auditors would examine the financial records of employers that benefited from the Ters scheme.

They will verify the authenticity of their claims and confirm if the correct amounts of money were paid over to workers, at the right time.

“It is disturbing that the UIF is still receiving complaints about companies who have allegedly received Covid-19 Ters money but who failed to pay these over to their workers.

“Allegations have also come to light that some employers were only paying part of the money to workers and not the full amounts and instead using the money for other purposes.”

He said the Follow the Money project audited R14.1-billion.

Of this, R12.8-billion was deemed as accurate payments while R918-million was recovered and R387-million was suspected to be fraudulent payments and were referred for further investigation.

The fund had also recovered R3.4-billion for which 10 people have been sentenced.

Another 46 persons suspected of committing Covid-19 Ters-related offences have been arrested and are currently facing prosecution.

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