• Administrator An-nei Stumke pleaded guilty to 71 counts of fraud, amounting to more than R6.6 million.
• The Hawks arrested her in December after she directed company funds into her account.
• She will be sentenced next month.

A 24-year-old former employee of Nuwelande Agri PTY (LTD) in Patensie, outside Port Elizabeth, has pleaded guilty to defrauding the company of over R6.6 million over a three-year period.

An-nei Stumke, a former finance clerk of the company, pleaded guilty to 71 counts of fraud, amounting to just over R6.6 million.

She told the Port Elizabeth Specialised Commercial Crimes Court magistrate, Lionel Lindoor, how she duped the company into paying R6 624 949 47 into her personal bank account between 24 June 2016 and 29 January 2019.

Lindoor accepted the plea and found Stumke guilty of fraud. 

The sentencing will take place on 30 October, said National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Anelisa Ngcakani. 

Ngcakani said Stumke was arrested by the Hawks on 23 December 2019.

She added that Stumke's duties at the company included administering payments to creditors and employees of the company. 

Explaining how Stumke committed the crime, Ngcakani said: "Her responsibility was to prepare and provide the director of Nuwelande Agri with Comma-Separated Values files (CSV files) in electronic format.

"These CSV files contained the full details of the payments to be made to creditors and employees. These details included the amounts due and bank account details of each creditor and employee.

"The company director would then copy the CSV files received from Stumke onto the internet banking profile of the company and authorise bulk payments," said Ngcakani.

Stumke populated her personal bank account details onto the CSV files to receive the funds.