The charitable foundation named in Daily Maverick’s sensational video “sting” project submitted thousands of allegedly forged signatures to the Independent Development Trust (IDT). This was to claim millions of rands in salaries on behalf of impoverished participants in an Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) initiative, money that in many instances did not go to the workers. Daily Maverick obtained documents containing thousands of signatures and initials that supposedly belonged to 700 EPWP participants from Limpopo.
These workers had contracts with the Collen Mashawana Foundation (CMF) to do bits of manual labour in Thohoyandou and surrounds. The programme was bankrolled by the IDT, which had given the CMF a R60-million contract to run employment schemes in Limpopo and in four other provinces. The CMF clinched the EPWP contract during suspended IDT CEO Tebogo Malaka’s time in charge of the organisation.
To claim monthly payments from the IDT, the CMF had to regularly submit payment sheets and attendance registers signed by the workers. The foundation also submitted a document bearing sample signatures of its 700 EPWP employees, known as a specimens sheet. Daily Maverick in May travelled to Limpopo, where several EPWP workers indicated that the signatures on the documents weren’t theirs.
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We then gave copies of the documents to a leading forensics firm, one that specialises in signatures fraud and related document analyses. Our experts’ scientifically-based work regularly features in legal proceedings, and their findings have secured several criminal convictions. Having scrutinised the IDT documents over a period of several months, they’ve identified compelling inconsistencies and discrepancies in the EPWP documentation. The firm’s findings are highly concerning: whoever submitted the documents to the IDT likely committed large-scale alleged signatures fraud in order to claim the workers’ funds.
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