A man, said to have been a project engineer working for the eThekwini municipality and tasked with signing off housing projects, faces fraud charges relating to the submission of false VAT invoices claiming to be for work for Shauwn Mpisane’s Zikhulise Cleaning and Transport.
David Williamson, 51, of Kloof and his DGW Consulting – a Pinetown-based company which specialises in plant hire and earth moving – is facing 12 counts of fraud, alternatively contraventions of the VAT Act, and one of forgery and uttering.
He is on bail of R10 000 and will appear in court again next month when another accused is expected to be joined in the matter.
The essence of the allegations against Williamson and his close corporation is that they submitted invoices to Sars claiming to have done work for Zikhulise.
The State alleges that the invoices are false and, at the time, he was employed by the municipality and therefore could not have done the work.
The amount involved is alleged to be about R1.7 million.
Mpisane, who is married to former Durban metro policeman Sbu Mpisane, will stand trial in June in the Durban regional court on tax-related charges involving R4.7 million.
DGW Consulting is listed on the charge sheet in that matter under the heading fraud, alternatively tax evasion, in which it is alleged that she presented false tax invoices from her suppliers – DGW being one of them – to Sars. The State now alleges that Williamson’s presentation of the same invoices was to back up the ones submitted by Mpisane and her close corporation.
Also before the court in a separate matter is the case of Preshan Ramdutt, a graphic artist accused of helping Mpisane to generate the false invoices.
Ramdutt will stand trial in August.
One of the witnesses in the trial against him and Mpisane is expected to be Mpisane’s former bookkeeper Kishal Reddy, who has pleaded guilty to two charges of fraud and forgery and contravening the VAT Act and has paid a R30 000 fine.
In his written plea before the court, he claimed Mpisane had given him legitimate tax invoices to use as templates to create the forgeries and that she had paid R10 000 for the first batch, about R13 000 for the second and was to have paid R16 000 for a third, but the bank refused to cash this cheque.
