‘Let him without sin cast the first stone’
An HR manager who was arrested last month for allegedly defrauding her former employers out of “at least” R1.5m by, among other methods, padding her overtime, has denied the allegations against her.
Lingasperi “Leigh” Madurai, who worked at Pietermaritzburg-based P&A Fabricators for 27 years, was arrested in early April on charges of fraud and released on bail after appearing in the Pinetown magistrate’s court.
On Thursday she told the Sunday Times: “I deny these allegations, they are absolutely untrue. These people will do good to think of John 8:7-11 in the Bible.”
The verse speaks about forgiveness, compassion and judgment.
While her former employers accused Madurai of more than R1.5m worth of irregular spending, that figure may change as investigations continue.
A spokesperson for P&A Fabricators initially agreed to an interview but cancelled because the spokesperson was “managing a crisis elsewhere”.
The Sunday Times has several documents detailing Madurai’s alleged crimes.
According to an affidavit by Nosihle Cele, a member of the HR department at the company, Madurai started working there in July 1997, holding the position of creditors/wages clerk and subsequently becoming HR and administration manager in July 2014.
Cele said Madurai took on other managerial roles outside her job description as HR practitioner.
“She was also the head of the company’s financial department wherein she oversaw all its accounting practices with the authority to load payments on the company’s online banking platform for payments to be effected by the company,” Cele wrote.
“In March 2024 I established that Mrs Madurai was inflating overtime hours and submitting same to the company for payment. I found this unusual because her salary exceeded the threshold in terms of the BCEA [Basic Conditions of Employment Act] whereby an employee could claim for these extra hours.”
The company, said the affidavit, did not authorise or consent to Madurai being paid for the extra hours. The allegedly irregular payments — between 2018 and March 2024 — added up to R232,856.
“Madurai claimed these extra hours as if it was part her monthly salary package and loaded it on the system for payment, as such, the employer would not have realised her misrepresentation.”
Cele reported the findings to management, who decided to wait until month-end to scrutinise the payroll register and then launched a “comprehensive internal investigation”.
Cele then allegedly found Madurai “operated at least six bank accounts that were linked to herself. She would upload payments on the online banking system citing the account name and/or payment reference to be that of one of the employer’s creditors. When releasing such payments, the employer was under the impression that the payment was to a creditor for supplies or services rendered.”
These alleged transactions amounted to another R1.5m.
“The investigation is still ongoing for the period prior to 2022 and the employer verily believes that the amount to which he had been defrauded will be substantially more,” Cele wrote.
“I wish to highlight the fact that the company has a procedure when payments are being authorised, especially payments to creditors, that is, all requests for payments are accompanied by the creditors invoices, delivery notes and statement of accounts. There were no such documentation to be found for all of the fraudulent transactions committed.”
The Sunday Times also saw a handwritten resignation letter, dated April 3, purportedly written by Madurai. It reads: “I, Leigh Madurai, permanently employed by P&A Fabricators, hereby resign with immediate effect after being investigated for fraud and dishonesty. Yours in shame, Leigh Madurai.”
KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson Const Thenjiswa Ngcobo confirmed the arrest. “Police in Pinetown have arrested a 54year-old woman for fraud which took place on March 3 2024. She made her first appearance on April 23 in the Pinetown magistrate’s court and the case was remanded to June 13,” Ngcobo said.