A report by ABSA has detailed how R35,7 million was brazenly stolen from the ANC-led KwaDukuza (Stanger) Local Municipality on Friday last week.

Interestingly, the money was siphoned from the municipality’s bank account and officials were not even aware until they were called to validate the transactions. 

When it became clear that the transactions were fraudulent, the bank immediately suspended the account. 

This is contained in a preliminary report ABSA sent to the municipality after the shocking incident. 

According to the report, the fraud was committed in two batch payments with 15 transactions. However, it did not state which accounts received the funds. 

“ABSA is actively investigating this incident. ABSA has engaged the institutions (banks) where the funds have been transferred to and they are cooperating to support the investigation. We take matters of this nature seriously and will communicate with the municipality using proper channels once the investigation is complete.

“We encourage the municipality to also consider initiating its own internal investigation which we will provide support if needed,” reads the ABSA report to the KwaDukuza Local Municipality.

The report is part of today’s special council sitting to discuss the matter. 

Meanwhile, an internal report by the KwaDukuza municipality shows that before the money was siphoned, all finance officials were simultaneously signed off from the Munsoft financial system which is used to manage finances. 

“We are hereby requesting you to urgently check the integrity of the Munsoft Financial System. I would like to bring to your attention that on Friday, a lot of our staff systematically lost connectivity with Munsoft, the email system and the internet at different stages in the day and one cannot rule out the possibility of a sophisticated hack into our financial system.

“We are afraid of data compromises in this entire process,” reads a report that was presented to the special council sitting by the chief financial officer, Adii Nunkumar.

However, in another report prepared for the council, the Director for IT services said there was no intrusion that has been detected in the network of the municipality. 

As a result, it was recommended that some finance officials hand over their laptops and an investigation be initiated to get to the bottom of the matter.