Manager who stole R4m from St John Ambulance gets five years in jail

A former finance manager who admitted to siphoning R4m from the bank account of her employer, the health-care training organisation St John Ambulance, has been sentenced to five years in jail for fraud.

Anastasia Mariana Parkin, 53, was sentenced in the East London magistrate’s court on Monday. Parkin was arrested by the Hawks’ serious commercial crimes investigation team in December 2019.

“Her duties included banking funds and payment of salaries and creditors. She was the only authorised user of the computerised financial system used to reconcile all financial payments made by or received by her employer,” Hawks spokesperson Brig Hangwani Mulaudzi said on Tuesday.

“The investigation, which began in February 2019, revealed how she stole the funds by transferring them into her own account and those of her family members. The court found her guilty on 993 counts of fraud.”

DispatchLIVE reported previously that her arrest followed an investigation by RMG Forensic Services investigator David Kirstein, which revealed the funds of St John Ambulance in East London had been raided.

In her guilty plea read out in court, Parkin said: “I admit  I misappropriated funds of St John. I effected electronic transfers by means of internet banking from the bank account of St John to my own bank account.”

Kirstein had earlier told DispatchLIVE the St John East London office, based in Southernwood, had no money.

He said the office could not pay salaries, and for months had been borrowing from other St John offices.

TimesLIVE