The Hawks on Wednesday said cases of alleged corruption involving millions of rand of embezzled Sassa funds were being heard before various courts around the country. 

In a statement, the crime-fighting wing said there were currently cases against 74 people who were found to have been entangled in the web of multimillion-rand corruption which occurred over a single month when Sassa was issuing the new Sassa/SA Post Office bank cards to grant recipients. 

“Some pensioners and other Sassa grant beneficiaries never received their pensions and grants [during the card switch over],” said Warrant Officer Bonisiwe Nxumalo.

“It was believed that their monies were illegally diverted to other accounts. In June 2019, a total of 20,787 fraud cases had been registered within the SAPO and of these, 12,432 social grant beneficiaries were reimbursed for the losses they suffered to the total value of more than R21m.” said Nxumalo. 

The following month, Sassa recalled some payments after it suspected fraud when numerous banking details uploaded on its system appeared to not match the beneficiary details. 

“A new modus operandi was identified where a beneficiary’s social grant bank account was changed or diverted into a new bank account without the knowledge of the beneficiary. The funds would then be withdrawn from the new account by an unknown person,” Nxumalo said. 

A police investigation was launched and in November 2019 80 people were arrested. The majority of them — 61 — were post office employees. Eighteen of these cases were referred to the Hawks for further investigation. 

“Cases against six accused were withdrawn pending further investigation while the others are on trial in various courts around the country. The investigation is continuing,” Nxumalo said. 

The office of the public protector also launched a probe into the incident.

TimesLIVE