The Asset Forfeiture Unit swooped on the home of a prominent uMhlanga businessman, accused of commiting fraud.
|||Durban - The Asset Forfeiture Unit swooped on the home of a prominent uMhlanga businessman and his wife who allegedly colluded with friends and family members to defraud the Independent Development Corporation (IDC) of more than R6 million.
The unit, assisted by curator Trevor White, attached assets worth millions of rand of Sateesh Isseri and his wife, Elizabeth Chetty.
The assets include six properties, 21 cars and 25 bank accounts.
The couple were arrested this week and appeared in the Durban Commercial Crime Court yesterday on charges of theft and fraud.
They were released on bail and are expected back in court on June 18.
They appeared with alleged co-conspirators Bradley Pillay and Normalarvasagie Reddy who allegedly helped them in the fraud.
The couple’s son Rodwin Isseri has been charged with money laundering.
The couple own the Primed Sub-acute Hospital Group, which has clinics in Newlands West and Sarnia in Durban. A third clinic is in East London.
According to the Primed website, the clinics offer a diversity of sub-acute rehabilitative and therapeutic services at a level between acute care and traditional home nursing.
According to court papers, the couple, through their clinic, submitted an application to the IDC for R10m in funding in 2007.
The funding was to be used to buy beds and other equipment for the clinics.
In December that year, the IDC approved the application for funding and began transferring monies.
Between March and April 2008 the IDC transferred more than R6m into the accounts of Media I-Corp, owned by Pillay, for the supply of medical equipment, including beds.
However, it is alleged the money was not used to buy medical equipment, but instead channelled out of Medi I-Corp’s account into Isseri’s personal accounts and used for other business ventures.
It is alleged that when an IDC official went to inspect the equipment bought for the clinic he was shown, among other things, Contura C360 specialised hospital beds and the invoices for them.
The IDC official took pictures of the beds and took them to Huntleigh Africa, the sole supplier of Contura beds in the country, who confirmed that the beds in the pictures were not Contura beds but “very basic beds”.
According to Huntleigh Africa there were no records of them supplying any beds to either Medi I-Corp or Primed.
Isseri is no stranger to controversy.
In 1998, he made national headlines when he accused government officials of a multi-million-rand fraud scam.
He was placed in witness protection, but was removed from the programme after the then attorney-general declined to prosecute those Isseri had named in the scandal.
In January 2000 he was arrested for his alleged role in the racket.
All the charges against him were dropped.
It was alleged during his bail application at the time that he had been part of a government corruption scam. He had faced charges of fraud in connection with two fraudulent cheques to the value of R790 000 that had been found in his possession.
This led to him “spilling the beans” on what he claimed was a complex scam milking government coffers of millions of rands.
The bail hearing at the time heard he had also faced charges of inflating his monthly income to defraud the witness protection programme.
Daily News