Alleged corrupt payments laid bare in trial of missing IPTS funds

Three-million rand meant to be used for the implementation of Gqeberha’s Integrated Public Transport System (IPTS) allegedly went into the pockets of a former ANC secretary, labelled as travel costs.

And just more than two weeks after the last payment of R15,000 was made to former ANC Bay regional secretary Zandisile Qupe from businessman Fareed Fakir’s business account on January 31 2015, Qupe and his wife bought a R3m property in Theescombe.

Testifying on behalf of the state in the high court in Gqeberha yesterday, former Deloitte assistant director Burt Botha said the alleged corrupt payments emanated from Fakir’s personal account and those of his two businesses, Heerkos and Jarami.

“It is evident the money received was used to purchase [the Theescombe] property on February 17 2015,” Botha said.

Bank statements from Fakir’s business accounts stated that the payments were made for “travel costs”, with 40 payments ranging in amounts of between R10,000 and R300,000 made between September 2013 and January 2015.

Before listing the payments made to Qupe, Botha said alleged corrupt payments amounting to more than R680,000 were paid to late former Bay mayor Mongameli Bobani, also from Fakir and his businesses, during the same period. In his earlier testimony, Botha said from his investigations into how funds received from the National Treasury for the IPTS were allegedly squandered, it became apparent that those implicated in the multimillion-rand fraud and racketeering case showed a pattern of diverting from specific supply chain management processes in an attempt to legitimise where the funds went.

At the start of the trial, Botha indicated to the court that Fakir, Qupe, Bay law firm Le Roux Inc and its director, David le Roux, along with former municipal head initially in charge of the IPTS projects Mhleli Tshamase, then metro head of infrastructure and engineering Walter Shaidi, disgraced businesswoman Andrea Wessels, her son Rukaard Abrahams, and former assistant director in the metro’s budget and treasury department Nadia Gerwel, as well as axed Bay deputy mayor and former ANC MPL Chippa Ngcolomba, were all fingered in a 2015 report into the misuse of funds meant for the IPTS.

All the accused pleaded not guilty to 16 counts of fraud, two of racketeering, 59 of money laundering, 53 of corruption, two counts of contravening the Criminal Procedure Act (CPA) for supplying false information, two of contravening the CPA for impeding an accounting officer, and five counts of contravening the CPA by failing to report suspicious or unusual transactions to the accused.

The case continues.