Court battle over mysterious cash payment of R10m

Social Development Department named

NEARLY five months after a mysterious R10m deposit embroiled a West Rand non-profit organisation in a feud with the Gauteng Department of Social Development, the organisation hopes the courts will unfreeze its funding and halt alleged harassment at the hands of the department.

A battle in the Johannesburg High Court continues with the aim of untangling a web of potential money laundering and to discern why the money was spent to send diesel to Zambia.

The department, a fuel wholesaler in Pretoria, Life Esidimeni, several banks and an NPO sheltering victims of domestic violence are involved in the case. All claim innocence. A re Ageng operates the shelters, and the department approached it last year to request assistance to transfer money to another NPO that could not yet receive payments directly from the department.

A re Ageng transferred R13m in June, only later discovering the recipient was Life Esidimeni. In October, R10m appeared in A re Ageng’s accounts, seemingly a foreign exchange. Nothing indicated the source of the payment.

The department approached A re Ageng to request the money be transferred to Life Esidimeni. The department was unable to provide adequate proof of ownership of the money to the bank and A re Ageng, so the money remained in A re Ageng’s account.

Although the department and A re Ageng have a signed service level agreement, the department then halted the group’s funding.

The department first claimed A re Ageng broke its contract. In a statement released on March 2, the department then said the frozen funding was a result of not wanting to transfer money to a previously hacked account.

“We haven’t breached anything concerning the service level agreement. We feel that this is just revenge,” Mpule Thejane Lenyehelo, the director of A re Ageng, said. “This issue is because we blew the whistle.”

Her organisation has continued to provide services to its beneficiaries.

Although they have not been paid for several months, staff go out of pocket for expenses, and a gold mining company foots the bill to feed beneficiaries.

This was not the first time the department used another NPO to channel money to Life Esidimeni.

In April, Sanca Horizon sent R14m to a treatment centre associated with Life Esidimeni. A representative of Sanca Horizon, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre, confirmed the transaction was requested by the department.

It declined to respond to questions yesterday.

Its MEC, Nandi Mayathula-Khoza, is scheduled to host a press conference tomorrow.

Lenyehelo claimed that because A re Ageng did not comply with the department’s demands, she was harassed and followed.

On December 22, the department removed people from an A re Ageng shelter and sent them to another NPO, described in police statements as overcrowded.

Several of these victims of domestic abuse returned to A re Ageng. Others disappeared.

“There are still some (beneficiaries) missing. They even left their belongings at the shelter because they felt they don’t want to go from one shelter to another. They’d rather go back to the street or back to their abusive relationships,” Lenyehelo said.

The organisation’s bank account was also hacked several times, with R5m disappearing in November.

That money turned up in the account of Kish Gas (Pty) Ltd, a fuel wholesaler. That account is now frozen.

In an affidavit filed in court on February 28, Kishan Jawaharlal, the company’s director, claimed a Zimbabwean calling himself “Morney Williams” phoned the company to say he wanted to purchase diesel.

According to Jawaharlal, later in the week Williams paid R5m, and in the two days following the transaction, 12 trucks were loaded with 40 000 litres of diesel and headed to Lusaka, Zambia.

Jawaharlal told the Saturday Star he did not trust the police, so Kish Gas employed a private investigator. The investigator made headway in identifying the individuals who transported the diesel to Zambia, although he would not provide details.

In the recent court proceedings, several incongruities appeared from Kish Gas financial documents, including charging less than market value for the fuel and paying R6 000 for rent one month, R76 000 the next and R40 000 the next. Jawaharlal explained the first point as wholesale prices and the second as fluctuations in electricity costs. The next court date is Tuesday.