JOHANNESBURG, December 17 (ANA) – A regional court judgment in Johannesburg this week against four people charged with electricity theft is a major victory for Eskom, the parastatal said on Saturday.
The Palm Ridge Regional Court ruled in favour of Eskom, handing down a guilty verdict on four accused, including a mother and son duo – aged 56 and 23 respectively. The four, who collectively faced over 36,000 charges related to electricity theft, were found guilty on 16,451 counts, Eskom said in a statement.
The two main suspects – Mafuthi Chiliza and her son Nqobile Chiliza from De Deur, south of Johannesburg, were arrested in December 2012 when they were found in possession of a stolen credit dispensing unit (CDU), a machine belonging to Eskom that prints out prepaid electricity vouchers.
“Also recovered from the Chilizas’ premises was a hard drive belonging to another stolen CDU machine, numerous customer lists, including electricity meter numbers, 996 illegal prepaid electricity vouchers of varying value, as well as other equipment used for printing prepaid electricity vouchers.”
The two other accused, who were also found in possession of customer lists, meter numbers, and illegal prepaid vouchers, were linked to Mafuthi Chiliza, whom the court established was the ringleader of a syndicate that sold illegal prepaid electricity vouchers, through records found on their mobile phones.
Telephone records also linked Chiliza to Andile Mgadi who was also arrested for the illegal possession of a CDU machine but was murdered during the trial.
The judgment was described as a great coup by Richard De Nobrega, senior adviser for Eskom security investigations, who also testified at the trial.
“Eskom loses billions [of rand] each year to electricity theft,” De Nobrega said during his testimony. “But Eskom or the state is not the only victim of this crime. To recover the money that is lost by the power utility due to electricity theft, including illegal connections, meter tampering and bypassing, and the selling of illegal prepaid vouchers, Eskom is forced to increase the price of electricity, which ultimately affects legal electricity users in the form of increased tariffs,” he said.
Following the guilty verdict, the state applied for an investigation into how the four accused benefitted from their illegal activity, which could lead to the seizure of assets, including real estate and vehicles. Sentencing was scheduled for February 3, 2017.
– African News Agency (ANA)
