Former estate agency board top dog arrested
January 19, 2007
By Roy Cokayne
Pretoria - Valencia Nontobeko Mazibuko, the former vice-chairman of the Estate Agency Affairs Board (EAAB), the statutory consumer protection body of the real estate industry, has been arrested and charged with fraud.
Investigations of other former board members were continuing, but none had been charged at this stage, Gauteng police spokesperson Lungelo Dlamini said yesterday.
Former EAAB chairman Linda Joseph Nyembe, who resigned from his position in the organisation in August 2005, is believed to be among the former board members under investigation.
Dlamini said Mazibuko was arrested at her home in East London on January 6 and subsequently appeared on charges of fraud in the Johannesburg commercial crimes court. He said Mazibuko was granted R10 000 bail and the case was postponed to allow her to obtain an attorney.
At the time of her appointment to the EAAB, Mazibuko was an estate agent for Continental Homes and a member of the Eastern Cape consumer tribunal, a body involved in the protection of consumers against unfair business practices.
Attempts to obtain comment from Mazibuko yesterday were unsuccessful.
The charging of Mazibuko and the investigation into other former EAAB board members follows an investigation launched last April by the commercial crime unit into specific charges against former EAAB board members.
This is in accordance with the findings of a forensic investigation into the affairs of the EAAB conducted by auditors KPMG.
The alleged offences were fraud, theft, theft by false pretences and contraventions of the Public Finance Management Act, but the total amount of money involved in the irregularities has never been disclosed.
Astrid Ludin, the deputy director-general for consumer and corporate regulation at the trade and industry department, said last year that the forensic audit involved an assessment of all the claims submitted by EAAB board members since their appointment in 2003.
After considering the forensic audit report, trade and industry minister Mandisi Mpahlwa last year requested the resignation of the seven remaining members of the EAAB's board.
Five members resigned in 2005 after the completion of the forensic audit.
Lindiwe Bulo, the EAAB's secretary, confirmed last year that some of the board members involved in the alleged financial irregularities had repaid the board, but stressed that criminal charges would be laid against board members implicated by the forensic audit irrespective of whether they had repaid the money.
Nomonde Mapetla, the EAAB's chief executive, said at the time that the board's fidelity fund, which is used to pay consumer claims following the misappropriation of trust money by estate agents, was financially sound and had not in any way been compromised by the alleged criminal actions of some board members.
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