A woman appeared in the Bellville Specialised Commercial Crime Court on Wednesday, for her alleged involvement in fraudulent tenders for the supply of refuse bags to the City of Cape Town.

Shu Wei Lu, 35, was not asked to plead to fraud charges when she appeared before magistrate Sabrina Sonnenberg.

According to the charge sheet, tenders that exceeded R500,000 were considered in accordance with points awarded on the basis of the price of the tender, and the number of historically disadvantaged individuals (HDIs) in a company's ownership.

The charge sheet cites the company, C'est Gyms CC, as the second accused.

Prosecutor Tracy Belelie alleges Lu fraudulently engaged a coloured woman, and gave her a fictitious 90 percent interest in the company, in order to be awarded tenders as an HDI-compliant company.

At the time, the woman was allegedly in the employ of the social development department.

For agreeing to be falsely registered as having a 90 percent interest in the company, she allegedly received quarterly amounts of R12,000.

The company was allegedly awarded a tender worth R49,982,433.

The State alleges Lu had a legal duty to disclose that the woman was also in the employ of the department at the time of submission of the tender, but fraudulently failed to do so.

Lu's failure to disclose allegedly caused unfair losses to other legitimate tenderers, and rendered the tender process irregular.

The alleged fraud happened between July 2008 and November 2010.

The case was postponed to November 6 to secure the services of a Mandarin interpreter.