A former chief clerk of Bergrivier Municipality (BM) was arrested on Tuesday 7 March on 435 fraud charges.
Pieter Jacobus Adams (56) allegedly loaded R1,3 million worth of free electricity tokens on pre-paid meters, while pocketing the cash he received.
The fraud allegedly took place from 2016 to 2018 while he worked at the municipality.
According to a press release published by the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks), on the same day the arrest was made, Adams worked as chief clerk in credit control at BM from 1 July 2002 until his resignation on 25 November 2019.
The arrest was done by the Hawks’ Serious Commercial Crime Investigation team.
It is alleged that on 19 September 2019, through preliminary investigation, it was discovered Adam’s prepaid electricity meter was replaced and changed to an indigent tariff, and the token to effect the said change was issued by Adams himself.
“This was not reported to his manager,” the press release states.
An internal investigation was done and it was discovered that during the period March 2016 until September 2019 the accused issued free electricity tokens on prepaid meters that were not replaced on prepaid-meter customers.
It was also further detected that free electricity tokens were issued on a monthly basis in respect of the same prepaid meters and free electricity tokens were issued both during and outside normal office hours.
It was found that a number of pre-paid meters had significant amounts of electricity units loaded on them in circumstances when the customers had not bought electricity from the municipality for a long time and therefore ought to have had few units if any at all.
No supporting documents could be found for the issuing of free electricity tokens generated by Adams.
The investigation further revealed that during the period March 2016 to September 2019, Adams issued 700 918,3 units free electricity tokens for pre-paid meters for customers to the value of over R1,3 million who he had no authority to do.
According to the Hawks’ statement the accused would receive cash from the customers and keep it for himself and then load free electricity tokens on the system for the customers.
The case against Adams has been postponed until 24 March.
