Mum says she stole a million ‘for my children’

A FORMER employee of Swabou, who claimed she stole close to N$1 million from her employer so she could buy food and clothes for her children, has been jailed for five years.

Over a period of about 34 months – from November 2003 to August 2006 – Eileen Veronica Tareni defrauded Swabou Insurance Company of N$928 661,65, Tareni admitted in the Windhoek Regional Court. What happens when someone steals that sort of amount from her employer is that she gets sent to jail, Tareni learned when her trial ended before Magistrate Sarel Jacobs last Friday.The money that she stole when she committed fraud dozens of times from November 4 2003 to August 12 2006 was used to pay her bills and buy food and clothes for her children,Tareni, a 45-year-old mother of four children, claimed in a written statement provided to Magistrate Jacobs. The youngest of her children is now 17, with her eldest child now 27 years old, the court was informed.Tareni pleaded guilty to fraud on April 2. In her plea, she admitted that on various occasions she withdrew money from Swabou Insurance Company’s petty cash account, pretending that she was doing this in the course of her duties as a credit controller, while knowing that she did not plan to deposit the money into another of the company’s accounts.A total of 82 such withdrawals were made. The first was a withdrawal of N$508,82 on November 4 2003. A second withdrawal, this time of some N$1 446, followed three days later, and a third, of N$1 483,25, followed five days after that. The amounts being withdrawn soon grew, with N$21 440,31 withdrawn on December 11 2003, and several similarly large withdrawals following on that over the next two years and eight months. The last withdrawal was the biggest of the lot – N$43 700 that Tareni got out of her employer’s bank account on August 8 2006.She was arrested on September 4 2006.Tareni’s explanation for her crimes was that she had three young children to care for and was struggling financially.Then, during 2003, while standing with cash in her hand after she had made a withdrawal of money for her employer, ‘I was for the first time tempted to take the money I had withdrawn,’ she stated.She then took the money for her own use, she related. While she knew that she was doing something wrong, that knowledge was overshadowed ‘by the fact that I would, for the first time in many years, be able to buy food and clothes for my children and pay my accounts’, she claimed.She was earning about N$5 000 a month at the time, and had about N$2 500 left after deductions, she also claimed.’TRAPPED’Tareni further stated that once she had started taking the money she had to continue, otherwise her employer would have realised that she had not deposited the money she had taken in the first place. As the fraud continued, she found that she just could not stop, she indicated: ‘The longer I kept taking the money, the more difficult it became for me to stop.’She admitted that she ‘was also driven by the fact that I could not go back to a life of continuous financial struggle and being unable to care for my minor children’.’I was never driven by greed and never had a lavish lifestyle,’ she declared.That claim did not convince Magistrate Jacobs. He noted that on average she pocketed more than N$27 000 a month. She also on numerous occasions took more than N$20 000 at a time out of the Swabou bank account. This, the Magistrate said, indicated that she was indeed motivated by greed.Tareni told the court that she lost her job with Swabou after the fraud was discovered. Before her sentencing, she was employed by a fishing company at Walvis Bay, where she was earning around N$2 500 a month, she claimed.She also stated that she had agreed to repay the embezzled money to Swabou. Her pension payout of almost N$330 000 and some N$68 268 in proceeds from the sale of her house have been surrendered to the company.She was paying back the remainder of the money in instalments of N$500 a month, and once her financial position improved she would be paying back larger amounts, she stated.At a rate of N$500 a month, it will take Tareni 88 years to repay all of the stolen money.With the sentencing, Magistrate Jacobs emphasised that it is a near inevitability that people found to have stolen from their employers would end up being sent to prison.He sentenced Tareni to eight years’ imprisonment, of which three years were suspended for a five-year period on condition that she is not convicted of fraud or theft committed during the period of suspension.Tareni was represented by Charmaine van der Westhuizen. Public Prosecutor Simba Nduna prosecuted.werner@namibian.com.na