R100 000 reward for Joburg cable theft info

The City of Johannesburg is offering a R100 000 reward for information that would lead to the arrest of suspects who stole cables worth R2 million.

The cable theft has led to the sabotage of the city’s data centre in Braamfontein on Saturday.

It was a suspicious robbery… an unknown number of criminals broke into the offices, stealing 50 meters of copper cable worth 2 million rand.

They also stole equipment that was locked in the storeroom.

Security on duty claim they did not see or hear anything unusual.

Only one CCTV camera was operational at the time of the theft. The others are yet to be connected.

Lucky Sindane, City of Johannesburg Spokesperson for forensics and investigations says: “We wonder what happened, were they involved as well as the contractor involved because this is a clear sign of sabotage.”

Sindane elaborates: “We suspect that this was an inside job, because there was no forced entry and went to a room where the tools of the contractor that were on site were kept and used that equipment to cut off the copper that was stored in another room of the centre.”

The stolen cables were not connected to the electricity grid. They were due to be switched on next month when the contract to build the data centre ends.

“We are currently investigating a number of contracts that were entered into by the previous administration, and we think this is linked to that because we have closed the tap and we are going to protect and investigate 35 million in this centre.”

An investigation continues.

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