Former NBS Bank corporate manager Bradley Sadler, who has served a year and one month in jail for fraud and corruption involving more than R65-million, had the remainder of his four-year jail term converted to correctional supervision on Friday.

The state did not oppose Sadler's application to convert the sentence.

In terms of the order granted by Mr Justice Squires in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, Sadler will be placed under house arrest for the full duration of his correctional supervision from April 23 to March 30 2004 on a 24-hour basis, except during shopping hours on Saturdays (between 9am and 1pm), to perform community service, for church attendance on Sundays and work hours from 7am to 6pm on week days.

Sidestepped the controls he was employed to devise

He has also been ordered to perform 144 hours of community service at Westville prison.

Sadler initially escaped a prison sentence after his conviction by Judge Squires in 1998, being sentenced to a fine of R500 000 (or five years in prison), 1 000 hours of community service and a five-year suspended sentence.

However, the KZN attorney-general appealed against the leniency of the sentence, which was increased to an effective four years in prison by the appeal court in Bloemfontein on March 28 last year.

Sadler had by then already paid the fine and completed his community service.

Imposing imprisonment on Sadler at the time, Appeal Court judges Marais, Scott and Mthiyane found it was regrettable that white-collar crime in South Africa was often visited with penalties which were calculated to "make the game seem worth the gamble".

Sadler was employed by NBS to devise and implement a system to enable the bank to evaluate the credit worthiness of applicants for credit, and to eliminate the bank's potential losses and risk.

Instead, he sidestepped the controls he was employed to devise and implement and knowingly put the bank at risk to the tune of millions of rands, in return for which he corruptly accepted large sums of money and other valuable benefits over a lengthy period.

The benefits he received, though difficult to quantify, were in excess of R300 000, the appeal court found.

With acknowledgements to Ingrid Oellermann and Independent Online.