POLICE BUST SUSPECTED FUEL THIEVES

3 men, 7 security guards face charges

A TEAM of policemen lay in wait for more than nine hours through the night at a train yard in Pretoria.

Two-and-a-half hours after midnight, they pounced on a group of men who are believed to be behind the theft of fuel worth millions of rands from a Transnet yard.

The operation, which started with the arrest of a man transporting about 20 containers of petrol in the early evening, netted 10 suspects. They included seven security guards who colluded with three other men to steal an estimated 1 000 litres of fuel in 48 containers.

The other three suspects included a Mamelodi businessman who had allegedly came to buy the stolen fuel. They were nabbed by a joint police operation at Transnet’s Waltloo Marshalling Yard in Private Price.

Members of the National Mobile Train Unit (Tshwane), assisted by the visible policing unit and Mamelodi cluster, acted on a tip-off about the theft of petrol and diesel from Transnet train coaches at the yard.

Captain Shawane Sepato said police staked out the yard from 6pm on Wednesday until 2.30am yesterday.

He said police first arrested a 27-year-old Mamelodi man who was found with more than 15 containers of diesel and petrol.

Sepato said the suspect then led them back to the yard. There they found security guards employed to secure the yard “busy pumping petrol from a coach into more 20-litre containers”.

Police found 33 such containers loaded on a Transnet bakkie.

Sepato said they found two more suspects, a 50-year-old Mamelodi businessman and his 71-year-old assistant, who had allegedly came to buy petrol and diesel from the yard.

A source close to Transnet said the company had lost millions of rands due to theft at the yard, and as a result it was forced to employ the services of a private security firm to guard the property.

He said the theft continued despite the presence of security guards.

Sepato said the suspects would appear in court soon.