GOVT FUNDS DEPOSITED INTO NMC CEO’S ACCOUNT

MBABANE – Government funds have been deposited into the personal account of the Chief Executive Officer of the National Maize Corporation (NMC), Sabelo Msibi.

The motive for depositing the funds has been said to be based on error, though accounting experts say such an ‘error’ is dangerous and could lead to theft of public funds if the parties concerned are not trustworthy.
Eswatini News can reveal that on July 6 this year, E55 184.48 was deposited into the Nedbank account of Msibi. On the same day, this was followed by another deposit of E3 941.75.
The money was deposited by the Housing Unit of the Ministry of Public Service.

Deposited

This alarmed Msibi to the point that he sprung to action and sought to find out why such funds were deposited into his account.
He said he was being owed certain fees as he was renting out his houses to government but the owed arrears were nowhere near to the amount that was deposited into his account.
Msibi raised issue with the government officials in a letter addressed to Thoko Mdluli who works in the Accounts Department.

“I wish to bring to your attention that two amounts were deposited into my account, presumably by error on July 6, 2009. On enquiry from the bank, it appears the funds were supposed to be deposited into Malkerns Community account but strangely, your office gave my account to the bank. Kindly arrange with Nedbank for the reversal of these transactions into the intended account,” Msibi said.

Msibi said he was being owed over E39 000, which was supposed to be for the month of June and July 2019, but the ministry had only made a deposit of E8 633.20, representing only one month.
In an interview this week, Msibi said he had raised the issue with his bank and said the error should be rectified. He said he wrote two emails asking that this be rectified.

Error

“Initially, they did not rectify the error even after a week of alerting them about the anomaly. This is despite that I was being owed. However, later on, when I insisted, they eventually reversed the money.
Msibi said if he was a ‘bad’ person, he would have used the money.

Asked what he would have done if someone had asked him to withdraw the money and return it to government, he said “I would have gone straight to the prime minister to tell him about that.”
The Ministry of Public Service admitted the error and said it was just one of a kind.

Information Officer Hlobsile Vilakati said after the error was corrected, the money had not returned to government but to the intended destination.
“We agree that an erroneous transaction was made into Sabelo Msibi’s account. However, he was trustworthy enough to report the error and thus a correspondence was forwarded to the bank to correct the anomaly.”

Destined

She affirmed that the money was destined for one of the ministry’s landlords which was being owed rent. She said subsequently, the money was forwarded to the rightful recipients.
“The error was one of a kind and it was just a genuine error from the accounts department. All monies are traceable at the end of the day, and so even if Msibi had not alerted us of the error, the ministry would have discovered it,” she said.
Meanwhile, a banker of note, who asked not to be named, said it was possible for monies to be deposited into a wrong account, with dire consequences to the one who authorised the transfer.

“When this happens, the bank will reverse the transaction and credit it to the correct account, but it can affect a number of things. Most importantly, you should never assume the money is yours and spend it.”
“As soon as government realised the error, it had to contact the bank and explain what happened.
‘‘The bank would then need a copy of the receipt so that they have a transaction number to begin looking into the issue, so it’s a good idea to keep all bank receipts until you are sure the transaction is cleared. 

Erroneous

‘‘Once the bank has gathered the necessary info regarding the erroneous deposit, they can reverse the transaction and credit government back the money.”
On the account holder, the expert warned that if one has money accidentally deposited into their bank account, they should not treat it as an unexpected windfall and spend it, but should contact the bank first and ask about the money.

“It’s important to note that when the bank discovers the mistake, they will reverse the transaction, even if it means that your account goes into the negative. If you spent any of this money, you will be responsible for paying it back. In some cases, and if the amount is large enough, you could also face criminal charges for spending money that isn’t yours,” said the expert.

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