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Image: Wikimedia Commons, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
Almost a week after his former boss was sworn in as a member of Parliament, former Prasa executive Daniel Mtimkulu learned his fate in the Johannesburg High Court on Tuesday. He will be going to jail for 15 years, the maximum sentence for fraud.
Mtimkulu was the head engineer at the passenger rail agency, a prestigious position he acquired through falsifying his qualifications, after working his way up the organisation, according to him. Over the course of five years in the position between 2010 and 2015 he earned over R15-million, until he was suspended following revelations of his fraudulent conduct. But not before he was lauded by then group CEO Lucky Montana at a press briefing aimed at debunking media reports that through Mtimkulu’s ill-qualified advice, Prasa bought a fleet of faulty trains that did not meet the basic standards of its South African infrastructure at a total cost of over R2-billion.
Mtimkulu was found to have lied about his national diploma and BTech degree from the Vaal University of Technology. He also lied about obtaining a master’s engineering degree from Wits University and a doctorate from Technische Universitat Munchen in Germany. None of these qualifications exist.
He was found guilty, and by the time his conviction came about in 2022, Prasa had had to repair the trains in question as they had been too tall for the platforms.
The Special Commercial Crimes Court ordered him to pay back R5.7-million of the R15-million he had earned in his position and when that did not happen, the Asset Forfeiture Unit seized some of his property earlier this year.
Just another fraud
Mtimkulu was part of a team that built the Afro 4000 locomotives that were meant to be added to the fleet of Prasa’s passenger trains, and cost around R600-million at the time. The locomotives were part of a large capital procurement process for which Swifambo Rail Leasing was contracted at a cost of R3.5-billion to Prasa. They turned out to be flawed in design, as they were too tall for the standard platforms across the rail network on which the agency operates. Ultimately, the trains could not be used for the purpose for which they were built, and additional modification work had to be done to bring them to the correct standard.
The Daily Maverick reports that senior state advocate in the case, Sithembiso Bhengu, argued that Mtimkulu’s actions had a detrimental impact on ordinary South Africans who missed out on potential benefits from the funds he fraudulently received from Prasa and caused significant reputational damage to the entity.
He said there were no circumstances that justified the imposition of a lesser sentence and that Mtimkulu had not taken responsibility or shown remorse for his dishonest conduct.
Montana, meanwhile, had claimed that Mtimkulu was being sought by many countries around the world for his expertise and was the leading engineer in rolling stock – but because he is black, his authority was being undermined.
