Former Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) chief engineer Daniel Mtimkulu has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for falsifying his qualifications and submitting a fake employment offer from a German company to bump up his salary.

TimesLIVE reports that Mtimkulu appeared in the Johannesburg Specialised Commercial Crime Court yesterday for sentencing after his conviction on three counts of fraud in 2022.

On count one, Magistrate Philip Venter sentenced him to 15 years in prison, and for the remaining two he handed Mtimkulu a six-year term. They will run concurrently with the first count.

This equates to an effective 15-year jail term, Venter said.

Mtimkulu claimed he had a National Diploma in Mechanical Engineering and a BTech Degree in Engineering (Maintenance) from the Vaal University of Technology‚ a degree in Mechanical and Maintenance Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand‚ a master's degree in Engineering as well as a Doctorate in Engineering Management.

In March, BusinessLIVE reported the Asset Forfeiture Unit had obtained an order to seize more than R5.5m from Mtimkulu’s properties in Johannesburg, Langebaan and Cape Town to pay Prasa back for the fraudulently obtained salary hike.

Full TimesLIVE report