22 arrested for defrauding City of Johannesburg

Jo'burg's Executive Mayor Parks Tau says that real progress is being made in the fight against cable theft, departmental fraud and illegal cable connections. Image: Jo'burg

The arrests include two City Power employees, two City of Johannesburg officials as well as external contractors and members of the public.

Briefing media in Johannesburg, the Mayor said it was believed that as a result of the fraudulent activities, R200m had been lost although the city had managed to recover R107m of this.

Mayor Tau said he could not divulge the details of the cases as he did not want to jeopardise further arrests, but said 30 other large power users were believed to be involved in defrauding the city.

The city, which has been working with the National Prosecuting Authority, the SA Police Service and the Hawks to develop watertight cases against those that have been arrested, instituted an investigation into allegations of fraud and corruption in 2013.

Mayor Tau said 109 cases of fraud and corruption were currently being investigated.

More arrests after tip-offs from community members

"We originally had 48 cases and in the past two weeks we discovered an additional 61 cases. In the next two weeks we expect to make 10 more arrests," Tau said.

"We have been able to make some of these arrests as a result of anonymous leads given by some community members. We are grateful for the contributions that community members have made in these investigations," he said.

Meanwhile, the Mayor used the opportunity to explain that recent power outages in Johannesburg were not as a result of load shedding, but criminal activity.

"The city has been a victim of deplorable acts, which have resulted in unplanned outages experienced by some customers. We are dealing with power outages caused by criminal activities,'' he said.

He said that 32% of power failures each month were as a result of theft and vandalism, 16% were caused by damage by third parties and 12% were related to stolen cables and illegal connections.

Residents could report anonymous tip-offs on illegal connections, cable theft, vandalism and tampering with the City's systems on 0800-002-587.