Ex-municipal clerk in dock for ‘dishing out 700,000 units of free electricity for cash’

A former municipal official who allegedly issued more than 700,000 units of free electricity tokens to customers with prepaid meters in exchange for a total of R1.3m cash is facing 473 counts of fraud in the Western Cape. 

Pieter Jacobus Adams has appeared in the Piketberg magistrate’s court, which released him on R500 bail and transferred the case to the Bellville specialised commercial crimes court for an appearance on March 24. 

“Adams is charged with 473 counts of fraud after he fraudulently allocated free electricity to households and businesses and pocketed more than R1.3m paid by the recipients of that electricity,” provincial National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson Eric Ntabazalila said on Wednesday. 

Adams was employed as a credit control chief clerk in the Bergrivier municipality from July 1 2002 until his resignation on November 25 2019. He was tasked with:

• ensuring electricity was provided to the correct consumers;
• adding new prepaid meters to the prepaid system; and
• submitting any suspected tampering of metering units to the water or electricity department for further investigation. 

“The state alleges that the accused issued unauthorised transactions [free electricity tokens] to individuals every month from 2016 to 2019, for which no payment was received by the municipality. The electricity issued was to the value of R1.3m,” said Ntabazalila.

“His luck on his fraudulent scheme ran out on September 19 2019, when the municipality discovered that the prepaid electricity meter in the accused’s residence was replaced and changed to an indigent tariff, and the token to affect the said change was issued by the suspect himself. He did not report this to his supervisor.” 

An investigation revealed some tokens were issued outside normal working hours, and “several prepaid meters had significant amounts of electricity units loaded on them though the customers had not bought electricity from the municipality for a long time and therefore ought to have had few units, if any at all”. 

The probe revealed that Adams allegedly issued more than 700,000 units of free electricity tokens, between March 2016 and September 2019, to prepaid meters for customers to the value of R1.3m, which he had no authority to do.  

“He received the cash from the customers, kept it for himself and then loaded the free electricity tokens on the system for the customers, which he was not entitled to do,” said Ntabazalila.  

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