POLOKWANE – The court case against Jacques Nell, former Polokwane businessman was postponed on Friday to May 9, when Nell will hear when his regional court trial will begin.
According to sources at the court, it was also believed that the case might be transferred to Pretoria, where Nell resides, due to the full court programme in Polokwane, where there is a lack of court rooms due to the burining down of the magistrate’s court. The shortage of rooms has caused the postponement of many cases time and again.
Nell was arrested on charges of fraud amounting to nearly R10 million, which is a schedule five offence as described in the Criminal Procedures Act no 51 of 1977.
According to the charge sheet, Nell allegedly committed fraud by supplying Absa with false tax invoices to secure financing for two new DocuTech machines. He is said to have allegedly misled the bank to secure finance for the machines, which resulted in the potential loss of some R9 million after Nell’s company, Data Master Office Automation CC was voluntarily liquidated. The charge sheet shows the actual loss incurred by Absa was R1,7 million. Nell was the sole member of Data Master Office Automation CC.
The charge sheet stated that Nell applied for asset finance for two new Xerox DocuTech machines to Absa around March 2009 under two account numbers for the amounts of R4,3 million and R3,1 million. The deposits were R850 000 and R638 000 respectively for these machines. The application was approved by Absa. According to a source in the Hawks’ investigation team, the irregularities were uncovered during an investigation by the Hawks into government tenders that were awarded in an alleged irregular, fraudulent or corrupt manner in various departments put under administration during December 2011.
The Hawks approached Absa with information gathered during their investigations, and Absa decided to open two cases of fraud against Nell.
It is alleged that Data Master already bought the above mentioned DocuTech machines in 2003 and 2006 from Bytes Document Solutions “Xerox”, the company that holds the sole distribution rights for Xerox machines in South Africa. Bytes Document Solutions allegedly confirmed that the amounts of just over R4 million and nearly R3 million were deposited into their bank account on March 3, 2009 in lieu of payment of Data Master’s debt to them.
He allegedly produced fake tax receipts and wanted to obtain funding to buy office equipment pretending it was new, while it has been financed before.
