26 August 2024
The National Lotteries Commission (NLC) was engulfed in massive corruption for many years. The new board and new management appear to have taken serious steps to improve the organisation’s governance. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks
A Soweto man implicated in several dodgy lottery grants worth millions of rands has appeared in court in Kimberley in connection with a “fraudulent” lottery payment of hundreds of thousands of rands to a non-profit organisation in the Northern Cape.
The grant, awarded by the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) to the Kgatelopele Foundation, was meant to “assist gender-based violence (GBV) victims and to also raise awareness of GBV”, said Hawks Northern Cape spokesperson, Warrant Officer Nomthandazo Mnisi,
Petrus Sedibe, 52, and Johannes Khoza, 35, were arrested in Soweto last week by the Hawk’s Serious Commercial Crime Unit. They were then transported to Kimberley where they appeared in the magistrates’ court on fraud charges two days later.
The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) handed the docket on its investigation into the Kgatelopele grant to the Hawks in the Northern Cape in May, leading to the pair’s arrest almost four months later.
The matter was remanded to the Specialised Commercial Crime Court on 30 August. Sedibe was released on R15,000 bail and Khoza on R10,000.
“Upon receipt of the fraudulent application for funding, the application was taken through the NLC’s processes, after which funding of R885,000 was approved,” Mnisi said.
The NLC paid the first tranche of R500,000 to the Kgatelopele Foundation, according to Minisi. But, a second tranche of R380,000, due after receipt of a progress report on the project meant to benefit the community of Platfontein in Northern Cape was not paid out, she said.
“It is alleged that during August 2021, the suspects collectively submitted a falsified application for funding to the National Lottery Commission (NLC) on the pretence that they were committee members of a non-profit organisation called Kgatelopele Foundation,” Mnisi said.
Sedibe is currently on trial in Johannesburg for allegedly defrauding a relative’s trust fund to the tune of R900,000. His unidentified relative received a payout from the Road Accident Fund (RAF), which was being administered by a trust, after being severely injured in a motor vehicle accident.
Sedibe’s arrest followed an investigation by Alchemy Consolidated Business Holdings, a forensic auditing and investigation firm, which began its investigation after his relative enquired about money paid out by the RAF.
Alchemy discovered that the banking details on invoices and quotes submitted to the trust on his relative’s behalf had been changed to one of the five bank accounts belonging to Sedibe and his companies.
“The NLC welcomes the arrest of the two individuals for alleged fraudulent conduct in relation to an NLC grant,” NLC Commissioner Jodi Scholtz said. “The funds distributed by the NLC are meant to uplift society and for no other purpose.
“These arrests affirm the work that we are doing in collaboration with law enforcement agencies to counter fraud and corruption at every level,” she said.
Sedibe is also under investigation by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) and the Hawks in connection with several other grants, including one for R9-million granted to the Motheo Sports and Entertainment Foundation in 2021 to develop a sports complex in Soweto. Only R6-million - two tranches of R3-million each - were ultimately paid to Motheo. The second tranche was paid despite work not having begun on the site, but the final tranche was never paid out.
When GroundUp visited the site where the complex was supposed to be developed almost two years later we found an empty property that was being used as a dump site.
Sedibe had identified himself as either Motheo’s “chairperson” or its “deputy secretary” in correspondence relating to the grant.
A GroundUp investigation into the grant in 2023 uncovered how two days after the first tranche of R3-million landed in Motheo’s account, two payments were made on the same day, one for R500,000 and another for R250,000, Both payments were to PSKO, a private company of which Sedibe was the sole director.
Several purchases, which appeared to have nothing to do with the funded project, were also made using a Motheo FNB bank card. Cash withdrawals ranging from R1,000 to R5,000 were made at ATMs in the days that followed. There was also a R100,000 cash withdrawal at FNB’s Southgate Mall branch in Johannesburg.
The NLC previously confirmed to GroundUp that it had filed a complaint of intimidation against Sedibe with police after two of its staff investigating Motheo were threatened.
Further investigations by GroundUp uncovered how Sedibe was involved in several successful applications to the NLC for grants involving other organisations linked to him.
Three grants to the TS Sedibe Foundation are also under investigation by the SIU and the Hawks: one for over R1-million in 2021/22 for a project in Limpopo and a second in the Eastern Cape for nearly R1.9-million in 2019/20 awarded by the NLC’s arts and culture sector, according to the NLC annual reports.
It appears that many of the lottery-funded projects involving Sedibe were related to GBV projects, in which a recycled application - with just a few details changed - was used. There is no evidence that any of these projects ever went ahead.
Lebo Odigeng, a freelance events producer, previously told GroundUp that she had been hired by Sedibe to assist with an application for lottery funding to stage a GBV-related charity event in Limpopo.
“I helped him plan the events, and also to fill out and submit the NLC forms. In September 2021, we went to the NLC offices in Polokwane to sign forms after the grant had been awarded,” she said.
Odigeng said she would frequently check in with Sedibe to find out whether the money had been received so that she could be paid for her work, and so the event could go ahead.
“I was battling at the time but he kept saying that he was still waiting for the money from the NLC, but I later learned that he had received over R1-million”, she told GroundUp last week.
“Eventually he paid me a few thousand rands, I think around R9,000, from his personal bank account.” She said it was less than she was owed and she received nothing more from him.
Odigeng was subsequently visited by the Hawks who asked her about lottery funding for a project in the Eastern Cape in which her ID was used in the application.
She was unaware of this application and believes that her proposal, implementation plan and budget for the Limpopo project were repurposed without her knowledge for the Eastern Cape application.
“I was shocked,” she told GroundUp last week. “The Hawks investigator had a thick file on Sedibe and I saw that it had copies of lots of different people’s IDs in it, which were allegedly used to apply for grants.”
Sedibe initially spoke freely to GroundUp when he was contacted previously for comment. He admitted that he had “assisted” some organisations to apply for Lottery funding, but then failed to answer detailed written questions emailed to him.
After receiving the questions, Sedibe demanded that GroundUp “prove” how it obtained its information, saying he would “then gladly respond”. He also demanded “proof that indeed you followed the right process to obtain information from [the] NLC”.
Sedibe accused GroundUp’s reporter of being “racist” and having “no respect for black people”, and threatened to “expose” him. He also repeated lies by the previous NLC administration that this reporter and his family had benefited from Lottery grants.
GroundUp subsequently received a letter from Sedibe’s lawyers claiming that GroundUp’s reporter was “harassing” him. The lawyer said Sedibe was unable to respond to matters under investigation by SIU.
“We kindly request you to wait for the outcome of the investigation so that you can obtain the side of the story of our client”, the lawyer wrote.