Fake engineer: A top South African railway official is sentenced to prison for forged qualifications

Associated Press

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — A former top official at South Africa’s state-owned passenger railway company has received a 15-year concurrent prison sentence for faking his engineering qualifications and other cases of fraud. The 49-year-old Daniel Mtimkulu resigned as the head of engineering at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa shortly before he was arrested in 2015. He was convicted of three counts of fraud and forgery in 2022 over fake university qualifications and a forged job offer from a rival company that resulted in executives at PRASA nearly doubling his salary to keep him. Investigators have said there was rampant corruption and mismanagement at some of South Africa’s biggest state-owned businesses between 2009 and 2018. Mtimkulu was sentenced on Tuesday.