RACKETEERING CHARGES ADDED AS CORRUPTION TRIAL LOOMS
The case against Midlands EMS owner Mark Winterboer, nine Hilton SAPS control room workers, a Health Department worker, and a towing company owner, facing charges of corruption and racketeering, has been indicted to the Pietermaritzburg High Court for trial in February.
The accused appeared briefly in the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s court on Friday, where additional charges of racketeering were also added.
The 11 stand accused of being involved with the giving and receiving of illegal tip-offs from the Hilton SAPS control room workers and Midlands EMS and Sherwin’s Towing.
They face 352 charges of corruption collectively, as well as additional racketeering charges.
It is alleged that when the 10777 SAPS call centre in Hilton received any calls from the public, instead of alerting the relevant authorities and all the emergency services, the operators would privately message Midlands EMS and Sherwin’s Towing first, so they could be first on the scene. The call centre operators would then get a cut of the profits via e-wallet payments.
In some cases, they would also claim from the Road Accident Fund and the patients’ medical aids. The e-wallet payments from Midlands EMS to the co-accused were put through as “consult”.
The implicated SAPS members are civilian clerks employed by SAPS at the 10777 call centre control room in Hilton.
The names of the accused are: Mark Winterboer (Midlands EMS), SAPS members Kevin Pillay, Giesela Williegh, Asokan Moodley, Siyabonga Makhathini, Kribben Naidoo, Genrose Nkabini, Michael Mazibuko, Malusi Zulu, Ntombifikile Mchunu, and Mahendra Singh, who is employed by the Department of Health as a control room operator for Grey’s Hospital.
Lareme Sherwin Moodley from Sherwin’s Towing faces a separate corruption charge.
The accused were charged and arrested in December 2019 after a two-year investigation by Hawks into the 10111 call centre operations. The investigation unearthed transcribed conversations between the suspects, bank payments from Midlands EMS to the accused SAPS members, as well as payments made to Midlands EMS from the Road Accident Fund between February and December 2018. The matter will appear in the High Court on 25 February, 2021.