A former MTN accountant who allegedly stole R53m from her employer by creating fake vendors and paying them has pleaded not guilty to charges of fraud. 

Branden Ruth Moshabane appeared at the specialised commercial crimes court at Palm Ridge magistrate’s court in Ekurhuleni on Wednesday where her trial was supposed to have started. She is facing 90 counts of fraud totalling R53,7m. 

While Moshabane pleaded not guilty to all the charges, her lawyer Carel Van Heerden told the court that her client would make admissions in terms of Section 220 of the Criminal Procedure Act.

In the admission submitted to court, Moshabane confirmed that the two FNB bank accounts which received payments funds from MTN belonged to her and not the service providers as she had claimed.

“The accounts mentioned above does not belong to any of the companies or service providers mentioned in the preamble of the charge sheet but to me. I admit that the account numbers mentioned above were not loaded in vendor account on the MTN SA master vendor database,” she said in the document read in court.

Moshabane, 48, further admitted that the Absa and Standard bank accounts from which she allegedly stole the money from belong to MTN SA.

She also admitted that the bank statements printed from these bank accounts are “true, genuine and correct”. She is yet to explain in court how the money got into her personal bank account.

Moshabane fraudulently transferred money from MTN bank accounts into her personal account between July 2015 and April 2017. Standard Bank contacted MTN after noticing strange transactions made into Moshabane’s personal account. She was arrested in 2017 and is currently out on bail. 

She hasn’t set her foot in court since five years ago when she was granted bail and the state proceeded to attach five houses and seven cars that she had bought with the alleged stolen money. Her bank accounts were also frozen.

On Monday, she appeared to have lost weight and came alone to court. 

According to the charge sheet read by prosecutor Bongani Chauke, Moshabane worked as an accountant for MTN with access to 76 bank accounts belonging to the company.

She was authorised to transact on these accounts but within the company’s banking systems. She submitted forms for the release of funds for payment to her FNB accounts which she claimed belonged to Mutual and Federal and Guardrisk Insurance.

“This she did, while knowing that the FNB accounts were her own personal accounts and not those of the companies or service providers mentioned…The accused also gave out and pretended that the said payments or transfers of money from MTN SA bank accounts was with the company’s approval.

“The accused pretended that Mutual and Federal and Guardrisk Insurance were service providers of the company that were going to render future services,” Chauke said.

Chauke added that Mutual and Federal and Guardrisk Insurance were not entitled to any payment but were used by Moshabane to disguise the fraud and theft.

As the state read the charges to Moshabane, she stood still in the dock, constantly looking down.

Dressed in a green cardigan and green blouse with blue jeans, Moshabane spoke softly as she pleaded not guilty to the crime in a virtually empty courtroom.

The case was postponed to later this month for trial.