Hawks national clean audit task team arrest municipal official for R3 million fraud
A 49 year old official attached to the office of Budget and Treasury at the Newcastle Municipality was released on R50 000 bail following her arrest for alleged fraud.
The Hawks National Clean Audit Task Team arrested Dedre van Rooyen on Thursday and she subsequently appeared in the Durban Specialised Commercial Crime Court on the same day.
Hawks preliminary investigation revealed van Rooyen had allegedly been withdrawing a second salary from her employer over the period between February 2012 to June 2020 which were additional undue payments over and above her ordinary salary.
During this said period, van Rooyen was responsible for payroll functions, which included the payment of salaries from the bank using Payroll System (Sage VIP). She was one of the supervisors that oversaw the day to day running of the salaries for the municipality which suffers a prejudice of R3.1 million.
She allegedly manipulated the payroll system in order to make salary payments in respect of former employees who were no longer working at the municipality at the time of the payments. Apart from one of these payments, all other payments were paid to her personal bank account.
The case against van Rooyen has been postponed to 01 December 2020 pending further investigations.
