With eyes downcast, arms folded and face expressionless, one-time Premier Soccer League chief executive Joe Ndhlela listened to Johannesburg Regional Court magistrate Willem van Wyk sentence him to three years imprisonment for crimes committed during his tenure at Transnet.
The court sentenced him to 15, 12, and nine months of imprisonment in connection with three charges of being an accomplice to fraud. The length of each sentence was determined by the amount of money involved.
Van Wyk also sentenced him to a fine of R5 000, or a further three months in jail, for transgressing the Companies Act by failing to disclose to Transnet that he had a material interest in a contract, namely a funeral policy scheme for its employees. The crimes were committed between February 1993 and May 1996.
The defence team was at lunch taking instruction regarding the lodging of an appeal and a request for further bail for Ndhlela, who pleaded not guilty at the start of his trial. He was convicted on July 2.
The court agreed with a submission by prosecutor Grant Buchler that there appeared to be a misconception that prison was a place only for people who committed crimes of violence and not for people from ”respectable families” or white-collar offenders.
In passing sentence Van Wyk said there was no evidence that Ndhlela benefited from the fraud but it was obvious that information was leaked to an outside company enabling it to fraudulently claim commission for supplying three staff members to the state transport utility.
The court said the crimes could not have been committed without Ndhlela’s help.
It was he who authorised payment and who should have been able to prevent Transnet being defrauded of
R189 981.
The court said it had become an almost a daily occurrence for senior officials to become involved in corruption or fraud and in doing so abusing the trust placed in them by employers.
Evidence in mitigation of sentence was given by Mrs W Stander, a social worker in private practice.
She delivered a report stating that Ndhlela had worked himself up from humble beginnings to a high position, including obtaining a Master of Business Administration degree, and that his monthly expenditure was R17 400 for his extended family that included his ex-wife and children –with whom he lived — and a new wife and child who lived elsewhere.
He also supported the four children of a woman acquaintance presently in jail. – Sapa