Durban: Convicted fraudster Vimal Rajbansi’s application for leave to appeal his conviction has been dismissed.
Rajbansi and Gideon Pretorius, both 51, were sentenced to eight years behind bars in the Durban Specialised Commercial Crimes Court last week.
They were convicted of fraud amounting to R3.million they committed almost 12 years ago.
Natasha Kara, spokesperson for the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) confirmed the application was dismissed shortly after the sentencing.
The Department of Correctional Services have been approached as to whether Rajbansi has reported to jail.
In November 2010, Rajbansi and Pretorius approached a company named Merchant, for finance to pay for office equipment to the value of R3.1m for Pretorius’s company, Ditona.
“They did this via Rajbansi’s company Brainwave Projects. The accused generated an invoice with serial numbers of the equipment and based on this invoice, Merchant provided the finance.
“Meanwhile, this equipment was already purchased and financed by another company called Rentworks.
“When Ditona went into liquidation, Merchant went through to claim the assets they had financed so that it is not included in the liquidation. This is when they realised the assets already belonged to Rentworks and they had merely handed over R3.1m to the accused.”
The complainant told the court that the fraud committed by the men severely impacted on his finances and this led to the collapse of the business.
The court ordered that each of the accused compensate the victim an amount of R1m, in terms of Section 300 of Act 51 of 1977 of the Criminal Procedure Act.
Kara said in sentencing the men, the court deviated from the minimum sentence of 15 years imprisonment because they were first offenders, suffered from ill-health and the court took their age into consideration.
IOL