Businessmen Convicted Of R3.1 Million Fraud

The Durban Specialised Commercial Crimes Court sentenced Gideon Pretorius (51) and Vimal Amichand Rajbansi (51), to an effective eight years imprisonment each, following their conviction on fraud amounting to R3.1 million. Rajbansi’s company, Brainwave Projects was fined R500 000, and this fine was suspended for five years with conditions. Also, the Court ordered that each of the accused compensate the victim an amount of R1 million, in terms of Section 300 of Act 51 of 1977 of the Criminal Procedure Act.

In November 2010, Rajbansi and Pretorius approached the complainant at a company named Merchant, for finance to pay for office equipment to the value of R3.1 million for Pretorius’s company, Ditona. They did this via Rajbansi’s company Brainwave Projects.  The accused generated an invoice with serial numbers of the equipment and based on this invoice, the Merchant provided the finance.

Meanwhile, this equipment was already purchased and financed by another company called Rentworks. When Ditona went into liquidation, Merchant went through to claim the assets they had financed so that it is not included in the liquidation. This is when they realised the assets already belonged to Rentworks and they had merely handed over R3.1 million to the accused.

In presenting the State’s case, Senior State Advocate Nevas Heeralall led the evidence of several witnesses, including the complainant who appealed to the court to issue the Section 300 order. Further the complainant told the court that the fraud committed by the men severely impacted on his finances and this led to the collapse of the business.

In sentencing them, the court deviated from the minimum sentence of 15 years imprisonment, because they were first offenders and they suffered from ill-health. The court also considered their ages.

The NPA welcomes the successful prosecution.

Issued by

Natasha Ramkisson-Kara

NPA Regional Spokesperson

KZN Division

Enquiries: nramkisson@npa.gov.za/071 6700 229