Top directors of the Gauteng-based engineering company NJM Treatment and NDE Services (NJM) made their second appearance at the Palm Ridge Magistrate’s court on Friday, where they are facing fraud charges.
Before their appearance, the six bosses were seen mingling and laughing in the corridors of the second floor of the specialised commercial crime court while waiting for their turn to appear.
Magistrate Sheron Soko-Rantao, who was presiding over the case of the directors, namely Mark Douglas Smith, Alexander Elias Roditis, Vanessa Chungu, Raymond Crozier, Guy Phillip le Roux, Ronald James Hoy, NJM, Dasmar Engineering and Thermo Jet, postponed the case to January 21 next year.
They all left the court premises in luxury vehicles.
NJM’s lawyer, Ian Small-Smith, was not in court. Soko-Rantao was told that he was absent due to health reasons.
According to investigations by the police, NJM and its directors admitted to having misrepresented themselves during their legal battle with one of their shareholders, Baleseng Zinyana, in the Joburg High Court. They admitted during the court proceedings that they fraudulently supplied a signed shareholders’ agreement to Eskom for the purpose of misleading and misrepresenting NJM shareholding to win a tender at the struggling state-owned utility a few years ago.
The shareholding agreement was intended to prove black business shareholder ownership of the company.
The directors made the confession when Zinyana, who held 26% of the shares, which she paid for in cash, took them to court after they refused to hand her the company’s accounting records to conduct an audit to determine the value of the business.
In her application, Zinyana said she suspected manipulation of the company’s financial performance as the management accounts did not tie up with the financial statements.
The application also stated that the financial records of the company were manipulated in order to reduce the company’s profit margin to below R50-million in 2019 to enable the entity, which also scored millions of rands from Sasol, to generate a BBBEE affidavit to maintain a BBBEE level 1 status. Apparently, in an attempt to refute her claim that she was a shareholder and was not entitled to the records, they told the court that the BEE certificate was meant to mislead Eskom into awarding a tender.
Zinyana also approached the company auditors and requested them to review the contents of the audited financial statements, but they refused to do so.
