Pretoria - A man who faked his chemical engineering degree, and based on the qualification, worked for Umgeni Water for eight or so years before the fraud was discovered, must pay back more than R2 million he earned.
The high court, sitting in Pietermaritzburg, ordered that the money had to be deducted from Sheldon Naidoo’s pension fund.
Naidoo resigned from his job after it was discovered his degree was fake.
He maintained that his degree was not fake and claimed that he had resigned as he had a life-threatening illness.
He, however, elected to remain tight-lipped about the details of his illness.
Naidoo could not explain why the University of KwaZulu-Natal said it had no record of him having obtained his BSc degree in engineering from the institution.
Umgeni Water runs a graduate development programme, for which Naidoo successfully applied in 2008.
He was accepted on the strength of his false BSc degree, which he had presented to his employer.
The goal of the programme is to allow appointees to become professional engineers registered with the Engineering Council of South Africa.
Umgeni Water never questioned the qualification until eight or so years down the line.
At that time, it changed its policy and employed a private company to verify all qualifications of the people on the programme.
Naidoo again submitted his degree certificate and his academic transcript reflecting the subjects he studied, and the results and marks he achieved for each subject.
It was discovered that the university had no record of his degree.
The manager of Umgeni Water asked him to produce any evidence to show he had received the degree. This included pictures taken at the graduation ceremony and even the names of his fellow students with whom he worked on a final-year project.
But Naidoo had all kinds of excuses – he said he had not attended his graduation ceremony and no longer had contact with his fellow students.
His employer remained convinced it was some kind of mistake and even gave Naidoo time off to sort it out with the university.
When he could not produce any verification of his degree, Naidoo opted to resign because of his “life-threatening illness” and because his “doctors advised him to stop working”.
The Umgeni Water manager said Naidoo would have never been accepted on the programme if he had not had the necessary degree.
He said that in retrospect, there were warning signs, as Naidoo had been on the programme for eight years and had been provided with the necessary exposure to permit him to be registered with the Engineering Council, but he had never registered.
It turned out that Naidoo did start his engineering studies at the university, but after a few years, his marks were so bad that he was not readmitted.
It turned out that his graduation certificate was a forgery and another student’s marks were reflected on the document.
The court found Naidoo to be an untruthful witness, and said he acted fraudulently when he falsely represented the true state of his qualifications with the intention of securing the benefit of employment from Umgeni Water.
Had the truth been known to Umgeni Water in 2008, no relationship with Naidoo would have existed and no money would have been paid to him.
The court ordered that Umgeni Water was entitled to subtract R2 203 565.04 from Naidoo’s pension fund payout.
Pretoria News