JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Sunday 6.30pm.
THE Heath special investigative unit has served legal papers on 12 more Mpumalanga companies, including five major banks, demanding full disclosure on all information relating to the province’s sacked deputy speaker, Cynthia Maropeng.
The notices are an attempt to follow a paper trail left by Maropeng when she allegedly embezzled over R700000 from a secret government bank account. The alleged fraud was uncovered by the Ngobeni commission, which found that Maropeng and two senior legislature officials illegally transferred more than R1,1-million from the secret Trust Bank account into their personal bank accounts.
Notices were served on Nedbank, Standard Bank, First National Bank, Peoples Bank and on the Absa group of banks late last week. Investigator Brenton Williams said on Sunday that he has also served notices on a Nelspruit-based attorney, estate agency, furniture store and number of smaller businesses that were reportedly paid for services by Maropeng.
“Most of the banks are giving us good co-operation and we’re pretty confident that we’ll be able to trace and recover potential losses incurred by the state,” said Williams.
Maropeng and three of her alleged accomplices — legislature finance director Jomo Siboza, administration head Wilson Ngwenya, and former legislature secretary Alfred Mahlangu — are all scheduled to appear in the Nelspruit Magistrate’s Court on Friday on one theft and nine fraud charges.
Meanwhile, corruption allegations have cost Mpumalanga’s disgraced former speaker, Elias Ginindza, his place on the ANC’s election lists for the 1999 general elections. The province’s preliminary lists, described by ANC spokesmen as the biggest and most hotly contested yet, were publicly released on Friday. Ginindza and Maropeng are the only two current Mpumalanga politicians whose names do not appear on the party’s list of nominees for positions in the provincial legislature, national Parliament or the National Council of Provinces.