Husband and wife David (55), and Beverly Brandsma (52), Frederick Hume (45) and Jeffrey Knight (54) appeared briefly at the Durban Specialised Commercial Crime court on Thursday 17 January 2019, on allegations of corruption and money laundering.
The four were arrested and taken to court by members of the Durban Hawks’ Serious Corruption Investigating unit following a two year investigation.
It is alleged the Brandsma’s worked in cahoots with Hume and Knight (54) using three entities: Sales 5 CC, Hume Meats PTY Ltd and Transtrade PTY Ltd, that were contracted as suppliers of frozen goods to Boxer Superstores and laundered almost R57 million over a period six years that is from 2011.
David Brandsma was employed by Boxer Superstores during the said period and aided by his wife, a director of To Be Sales 5 CC sourced the goods from the two other contracted entities at inflated prices and then arranged for kickbacks to be paid into his own bank account.
The disguised kickback arrangement carried on until retailer’s internal auditors picked up the irregularities on one of the transactions. A case of fraud was the registered at the Westville police station in August 2017. Pending the investigations the investigating team was able to attain an interim preservation order totalling R20 million.
Meanwhile, all the suspects were granted bail following their brief appearance. The Brandma’s were granted R50 000 bail each whilst Hume and Knight are out on R75 000 bail respectively.
The matter has been postponed to 26 August 2019 for a pre-trial hearing.
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