LIMPOPO – The fourth accused in the Royal Bafokeng fraud case, Aaron Madada (43) was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years direct imprisonment by the Polokwane Specialised Commercial Crime Court on Monday, 10 May 2021.

In July 2018, Madanda together with his three co-accused, Goci Nwabisa (32), Tshepo Daniel Sehlapelo (30) and Lefty Nkabe Makalela (44) approached an Absa bank official in Burgersfort posing as signatories of Royal Bafokeng Holdings.

The group presented fraudulent identity documents and asked the bank employee to assist in opening an account to transfer over R500 million from Royal Bafokeng Holdings account into the new account.

The official became suspicious and alerted the authorities, subsequently the accused were arrested by the Hawks’ Serious Commercial Crime Investigation members.

Nwabisa, Sehlapelo, and Makalela have since been convicted by the same court and each sentenced to 15 years direct imprisonment. Nwabisa and Sehlapelo were additionally sentenced to another 2 years direct imprisonment for contravention of Sec 18 (1) of the Identification Act 68, 1997. The sentences were ordered to run concurrently.

Madanda’s 5 years of the 15 year sentence will run concurrently with 8 years sentence that he is currently serving on another unrelated fraud. He was further declared unfit to possess a firearm.

Source: South African Police Service