The Special Tribunal has ruled that the pension of Sanele Dlamini, a former grants manager in the National Lotteries Commission (NLC), be frozen pending an investigation.

The ruling comes after the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) applied to have his pension mothballed until an investigation into the entire commission and funded projects is concluded.

The SIU believes that Dlamini acted in a fraudulent manner in approving a grant funding to Motheo Foundation to build a sports complex in February 2022. The SIU told the Tribunal that Motheo was granted R9 million for the project, but no sports complex was ever built.

According to the SIU papers before the tribunal, at some point, R3.5 million was approved by the commission and it was shared amongst 16 people and Dlamini was one of the unlawful beneficiaries.

It appears that Dlamini was being rewarded for signing off a fraudulent report which claimed that the construction of the sports complex was well underway, so the R3.5 million was approved. The report used fraudulent pictures which were presented as progress on the ground.

“The investigation by the SIU revealed that the signatures of the first respondent (Dlamini) and Ms Maodi confirmed the correctness of the progress report, thereby ensuring the release of the second tranche of money being R3 million. It transpired that at that stage no work whatsoever has been carried out on the site,” the SIU submitted to the Tribunal while motivating for the freezing of Dlamini’s pension.

The SIU added that the items mentioned in the Motheo Foundation’s first progress reports was a complete fabrication of what was transpiring on the site as no work was ever done by the Motheo Foundation despite the assertions contained in the report.

“In the result the first progress report was entirely false.”

Dlamini has already been dismissed by the commission and the value of his pension held by Corporate Selection Umbrella Retirement Fund and it will be determined within 60 days following the ruling by the Tribunal.