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A KZN doctor has been arrested.
Getty Images / Gallo Images
- A 51-year-old doctor was arrested in connection with the Sassa fraud, after having been on the run for two years.
- In the same case, seven people were arrested in 2018 for allegedly prosecuting fraudulent disability grants.
- Some have been linked to the murder of a Sassa employee tasked with investigating the case in 2008.
A KwaZulu-Natal doctor has been arrested for allegedly prosecuting fraudulent disability grants over a three-year period. He was reportedly on the run for two years prior to his arrest on Friday.
According to Hawks spokesman Capt.Simphiwe Mhlongo, the arrest comes as part of a crackdown on a network that was allegedly facilitating fraudulent claims from the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) by approving disabilities that beneficiaries did not have.
The 51-year-old man is one of two doctors charged with confirming disabilities that beneficiaries did not have in order to claim a disability grant.
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It is alleged that the doctors were paid for this after the applications were approved, Mhlongo said.
The second doctor is accused of handling fraudulent disability grants between 2005 and 2008, in Ngwelezane.
He is expected to appear in the Durban Commercial Crimes Court on Monday.
Arrests two years ago, murder case
Mhlongo said the first doctor was arrested in 2018, along with six other people, some of them Sassa officials. They were charged with conspiring to defraud Sassa out of about 25 million rand.
It was at this point that the second doctor went on the run, before his arrest this week.
Of the seven arrests in 2018, three were also linked to and ultimately charged with murder for their alleged role in an attack on a Sassa employee tasked with investigating the case.
Thembinkosi Dlamini, 36, was shot and killed in his office just six days after the internal investigation began in June 2008, Mhlongo said.
At that time, six people had been arrested in connection with the murder.
They were later found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2013 by the Mtunzini High Court.
