Africa-Press – South-Africa. An administrative clerk has been handed a 10-year jail term for stealing R6.6 million from the Eastern Cape government-owned Coega Development Corporation.
Bathandwa Matikinca, 37, duped the corporation into paying millions of rands into accounts of “ghost” interns he created for nine years.
Matikinca would forward names of non-existing interns to a service provider hired by Coega to pay stipends of interns undergoing in-service training at the corporation.
The names are those of people who already completed their training at Coega and left the programme, but the accounts in which the funds were paid into were held in Matikinca’s name.
The Hawks’ Serious Commercial Crime Investigation Unit uncovered the scam, which ran between March 2013 and February 2021.
Matikinca worked as a learner support officer who coordinated the in-service training programme.
The Gqeberha Specialised Commercial Crimes Court on Friday sentenced Matikinca to 10 years’ imprisonment for fraud.
He also received five years’ imprisonment for money laundering. The court ordered that the sentences run concurrently, meaning Matikinca will spend a decade in jail.
Matikinca was convicted on 1 March 2023.
“Matikinca, as the administrative and learner support officer at the Coega Development Corporation, used the details of learners that had already exited the training programmes and substituted their banking details with his on the payroll system to the external payroll (wage bureaus) service provider used to process the learners’ stipends,” said Hawks spokesperson Captain Yoliswa Mgolodela.
She said an investigation discovered that the suspect also paid funds into his wife’s bank account.
“The matter was reported to the Gqeberha-based team of the Hawks for extensive investigation. Investigations confirmed the prejudice to the Coega Development Corporation of more than R6.6 million,” said Mgolodela.
The Hawks arrested Matikinca on 26 May 2022 and he made his first court appearance in the Gqeberha Specialised Commercial Crimes Court four days later.
The provincial head of the Hawks, Major-General Mboiki Obed Ngwenya, welcomed the sentencing and lauded the Gqeberha Serious Commercial Crime Investigation team of the Hawks for their efforts to curb crime.
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