The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) is on a drive to recoup over R2.1 billion in lost revenue as a result of vehicle licence disc fraud.
The agency has launched an operation to clamp down on fraud and corruption by transport companies, and over the past 13 months it has raided 23 trucking companies with a combined fleet of over 1,700 vehicles.
These businesses allegedly obtained licence discs for trucks and minibuses through illegal avenues. Some of them are also being investigated for crimes such as money laundering, racketeering, and attaching police sirens to their own security vehicles.
The first step will be to serve the companies a letter of demand asking for full payment of money fraudulently siphoned from the state. The second will involve law enforcement agencies such as the Hawks carrying out the arrests of guilty individuals.
The fraudulently licensed vehicles are major contributors to the carnage that plays out on the country’s roads every day and place a massive burden on the Road Accident Fund, said RTMC CEO Makhosini Msibi.
The majority of the companies are located in Mpumalanga with over R1.2 billion in missing licence fees to be recouped in the province.
The Free State, Gauteng, and KwaZulu-Natal have also been marked as hotspots for these crimes.
No stone left unturned
The RTMC is not only targeting owners and directors of the implicated trucking companies but also lower-level accomplices such as licensing officials and the so-called “runners” who do the footwork on behalf of the ring leaders.
“Those who are employed by the government as well as the municipalities in the registration authorities who have colluded with the owners of these vehicles will also be pursued, apprehended, charged, and brought before the court,” Msibi told SABC News.
Usually, as soon these individuals catch wind that they are the subject of such an investigation they will resign from their positions and disappear from the public eye to protect their pensions.
“There are two processes. Once they are charged before court, they equally have to be charged departmentally, and we now know, because the moment they’re apprehended, most of them opt to resign,” said the spokesperson.
“Now we are beginning to focus on their pension fund so that even if they resign, the pension fund should not be paid.”
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