Roux found guilty of fraud

FORMER financial manager, Roelien ‘Lientjie’ Vera Roux (33), accused of embezzling a total of R5 628 046.07 from the Southcoast Mall was convicted by magistrate Johann Bester in the Port Shepstone Regional Court of 75 counts of fraud and 75 counts of money laundering on Tuesday last week.

Mrs Roux pleaded guilty to the charges, while the charges against her husband Frederick Roux (34) and mother Mathilda Remona Botha (52) were dropped at the same time.

Mrs Roux was to be sentenced yesterday (Wednesday) but magistrate Bester postponed the case to the January 10 next year, in order, to obtain a report from a social worker in Rustenburg where Mrs Roux, her husband and two small children are at present residing.

The state and defence counsel agreed with the court that since the interests of the two small children had to be considered by the court, it was essential to obtain such a report.

Mrs Roux is currently out on bail.

During the period August 2009 to January 2012 Mrs Roux was employed as a financial manager for Hyprop Investments Limited, a company which is co-owner of the Southcoast Mall in Shelly Beach and which manages the mall on behalf of its owners.

The court found that she had used various methods to defraud the company of amounts ranging from R3100 to R300 000. She created fictitious invoices and other documents and misled the company to believe the amounts were payable to certain debtors. She would then pretend to effect payment to those debtors while she was in truth paying sometimes substantial amounts either into her own bank account or those of her husband and her mother. A total of R5 628,046.07 was stolen from Hyprop in this way.

The convictions for the 75 counts of money laundering stemmed from her dishonest movement of the monies to other bank accounts and the manner of her concealment of it.

The court also heard that large sums of money were withdrawn over a period of time and used for gambling.