Fine of N$20 000 given for N$1,2 million fraud

A FORMER creditors clerk with a Windhoek accounting company, who admitted that she committed fraud involving more than N$1,2 million during her employment with the company, got off lightly with a fine and suspended prison sentence at the end of her trial in the High Court in Windhoek on Friday.

Almost three months after she pleaded guilty to 22 counts of fraud, former Windhoek Mechanised Accounting Services employee Sylvia van Wyk (48) was sentenced to pay a fine of N$20 000 at the end of her trial before Judge Collins Parker.Judge Parker also sentenced Van Wyk to a jail term of three years, which was suspended in full for a period of three years on condition that Van Wyk is not convicted of fraud that had been committed during the period of suspension.Van Wyk admitted that between October 28 2002 and May 28 2004, while she was employed at Windhoek Mechanised Accounting Services, she committed fraud on 22 occasions. She did this by making out cheques in the name of a firm that was a supplier of food products to two of her employer’s clients, Nutrifood and Independence Caterers. In fact, though, the firm was not due to be paid by these clients for goods that had been supplied to them.After the cheques had been signed by the responsible person at Nutrifood and Independence Caterers, the cheques were then marked ‘c/o S. Louw’ or ‘c/o S.J. Louw’ and paid into the bank account of a co-accused of Van Wyk, Swakopmund businessman Seth Jacobus Louw.An amount of more than N$1,22 million was deposited into the account in this way. Louw then shared half of this money with her, Van Wyk told the court after she had pleaded guilty.Louw (58) is denying the charges. His trial was separated from Van Wyk’s after she admitted the charges, and he is now set to go on trial in the High Court in March next year.In testimony after her plea, Van Wyk claimed that the fraud she committed was all Louw’s idea. She claimed it took a couple of approaches by Louw to her before she agreed to execute his fraudulent plan.The more than N$600 000 that she received as a result of the fraud was used for ‘daily purposes’, Van Wyk told the court.After the fraud was discovered Van Wyk’s now former employer took legal action against her and Louw in an effort to recover the embezzled money from them, the Judge was also told.Windhoek Mechanised Accounting Services managed to recover a little over N$872 000 in this way. Most of this money was recovered from Louw, from whom the company recovered N$850 000, while it recouped some N$22 187 from Van Wyk.With the sentencing on Friday, Judge Parker noted that Van Wyk’s former employer asked the Namibian Police in November 2005 to withdraw the charges against Van Wyk. The company’s Managing Director also told the Judge that he and the company did not want to see Van Wyk, who worked at the company for about eight years, sent to jail.Clinical psychologist Eunice Gonzo, who compiled a pre-sentence report on Van Wyk for the court, also testified last week that Van Wyk’s children would have suffered most of all if their mother was sent to prison. Gonzo told the court that in her opinion Van Wyk was no threat to the general public, that she had learned a lesson from her wrongdoing and is unlikely to repeat such crimes, and that she is ‘an honest, upright member of the public’ who has made a mistake in judgement, Judge Parker recounted.The Judge said he was accepting the argument from Van Wyk’s defence lawyer, Lucius Murorua, that Van Wyk is not a danger to the community or a threat to society. He said he concluded that the likelihood that she could continue to be useful to her community could not be ruled out, and that it would not be in the interest of justice and the fair administration of criminal justice to remove Van Wyk from society by imposing a prison sentence in her case.State advocate Ed Marondedze prosecuted.