Ex-finance head claims he is broke

THE FORMER finance manager who allegedly fleeced R35 million from Eskom pleaded poverty and said he was relying on his wife for money in his bid to receive bail.

It also emerged that Bernard Moraka had a previous theft conviction after being found guilty of shoplifting in 1997 – a year after he finished high school.

The Cape Argus’ sister newspaper The Star earlier reported that Moraka was facing 53 counts of fraud for allegedly creating bogus invoices totalling just under R35m between 2016 and last year with a close corporation that, investigators asserted, did no work for financially strained Eskom.

According to the investigative report, Moraka would submit invoices for payment to the company in question, claiming it had transported coal from Palesa Mine in Mpumalanga to Forfar or Clewer – coal industry towns in the same province.

Yesterday, at the Johannesburg Specialised Commercial Crimes Court sitting in Palmridge, Moraka revealed in an affidavit that he was currently unemployed, married with five children and lived in a paid-up, R2.5m home west of Joburg.

“At the moment, I have no other income and I am relying on my wife (for support)… In 1997, I was convicted in Zeerust (North West) of shoplifting and sentenced to correctional supervision.

Eskom confirmed that Moraka was employed by them, but that he had resigned in October last year – a month after he allegedly made the last of the spurious payments of more than R1.7m.

Yesterday, Eskom said: “This is indeed part of the Eskom clean-up campaign as this matter is one of the priority cases tracked by Eskom.”

Moraka was in custody for a week after being arrested last Tuesday during the same week that MPs approved the Special Appropriations Bill, which injected R59 billion into the ailing state-owned entity’s coffers.

The State did not oppose bail for Moraka, who was released after paying R20000. He will be back in court next month.