Ten people were arrested on the West Rand and in the North West province on Monday, for allegedly defrauding the Mine Pension Fund of more than R4,5-million, police said.
A spokesperson for the Johannesburg commercial crimes unit, Superintendent Lungelo Dlamini, said several plots and houses of former mine employees were raided on Monday morning.
Dlamini said the arrests were carried out at Randfontein, Carletonville and Fochville, as well as at Rustenburg Platinum mines.
He said police started investigating after Harmony Gold mine management suspected that its pension scheme had been defrauded.
Dlamini said 19 people who were discharged or who had voluntarily terminated their services were allegedly helped by a middleman to use falsified documents to claim from the pension scheme.
The investigation is still going on and more arrests are expected.
The suspects were to appear in the Johannesburg Commercial Crimes Court on Monday.
In a separate statement, Harmony said 20 miners and artisans had resigned from its Randfontein operations between June 2001 and July 2002.
”Harmony and the Mine Pension Fund discovered that the employees had fraudulently claimed retrenchment benefits from the fund,” the statement read.
”Harmony immediately initiated an investigation with the full cooperation of the pension fund and the South African Police Service.
”Harmony takes a hard line against illegal or fraudulent activity and was pleased that the result of the investigation led to today’s arrests of the gold miner’s former employees.” — Sapa