REPORTS of major organised crime working within our province’s numerous fuel transportation companies have started to surface.
Allegations point to a far-reaching criminal network that somehow surpasses the high-tech gadgetry used by these companies to dissuade such activities.
Fuel tanker drivers are reportedly approached by ‘recruiters’ who, before the driver is aware of anything, have included him in their scheme.
The scheme involves siphoning hundreds, sometimes thousands, of litres of fuel from tankers before reaching their intended destination.
More often than not, this fuel is being ‘stolen to order’ and is quickly sold on the black market.
Those involved in such criminal practices, reportedly not a new phenomenon, include tanker drivers, office-based staff including sales staff, and at least one fuel attendant at each service station.
His task in this operation is to either pretend the full order was received or, more worryingly, dilute the fuel with water in an attempt to make up the full ordered quantity.
Through their private cell phone network, the criminals liaise with drivers and other industry employees. The driver then makes an apparently unwarranted stop and is met by those who illegally siphon fuel from the tanker.
While numerous gadgets and devices are used to prevent thievery of fuel, these persistent criminals, concerned solely with their share of the criminal takings, have managed to bypass even the most sophisticated gadgets.
Tankers are tracked and those in charge are electronically informed when one ‘powers down’, or stops, where it shouldn’t.
An electronic device known as an ‘Alfonso Gauge’ sends power to another electronic device, the ‘Soluflow’, only when pumping should take place.
A metal pin prevents pumping at any other time. However, rogue employees simply break the pin which allows fuel to be pumped anytime, anywhere.
The criminals’ ‘mahhala pipe’, an adapted fuel pumping pipe, is then used to siphon vast quantities of fuel in a short space of time. It takes only two minutes to pump 250 litres of fuel.
Stealing fuel is the object of both small-timers, who siphon perhaps a few hundred litres, and syndicates whose task it is to service a much larger black market industry. Either way, it is an activity most in the industry are eager to brush under the carpet.
Arrests have been made, however, with three suspects caught in possession of R13 000 worth of stolen fuel near Mtubatuba last week.
