Police top brass looted the crime intelligence secret fund by blowing more than R145-million in irregular expenditure - and in once instance paying rent for a furniture shop and claiming it was a safe house. A secret auditor-general report reveals wholesale looting of the slush fund by crime intelligence bosses in one year.The furniture shop was paid more than R324000 as a safe house, but, when queried by the auditor-general, it was found that "they sell furniture and they do not rent out premises".Sources in crime intelligence said this was the tip of the iceberg and that paying inflated rentals or for bogus safe houses was rife.According to the report, R98-million was spent on vehicle projects "without a proper needs assessment". It also flagged R47-million which was spent on seven "awards" as irregular.The report said senior crime intelligence officers blew more than R900,000 flying their families around, and made payments to ghost informers.story_article_left1The report confirmed a Sunday Times investigation that found that convicted drug dealer and KwaZulu-Natal businessman Timmy Marimuthu, his wife, daughter and son-in-law were paid thousands as crime intelligence employees without doing any police work.This explosive report was submitted to embattled police chief Riah Phiyega in 2012 and she now believes her detractors want her out for investigating some of the allegations.Police spokesman Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi said many "improvements [had] already [been] attained" since the report was sent to Phiyega.These included cracking down on officials looting the secret fund. In the past two years, 32 crime intelligence officials had been charged with fraud and corruption, 12 found guilty and 11 dismissed.To deal with shortcomings in intelligence tradecraft, the police would introduce a six-week training programme to improve command and control at crime intelligence and were sending members on undercover-agent courses.Experts have warned that the disarray in crime intelligence has contributed to rising crime levels. The report provides details about shenanigans involving suspended crime intelligence boss Richard Mdluli and axed crime intelligence chief financial officer Solly Lazarus.Many of the cases detailed in the report, including on Mdluli and Lazarus, have been reported on widely before, including in this newspaper.But this is the first official confirmation of the scale and extent of the looting spree.The report said sloppiness in managing the secret-agent programme could compromise the safety of informers.Proper security standards in classifying informer rewards were not applied, putting lives at risk.Many handlers weren't properly trained, didn't have valid security clearance, failed to put contingency plans in place for rescuing informers if things went wrong, and could have compromise "the clandestine relationship" with informers."In case a handler is having a foreign national as an informer, foreign services can pick up the relationship when they are intercepting the phones as there is no coded way of communication between the informer and the handler due to the absence of communication plans," the report said.Lack of proper training in "intelligence tradecraft" meant handlers "might not ... detect a threat to national security".The auditor-general found no evidence that section commanders were physically verifying informers, which meant crime intelligence "might be paying for ghost informers".The report also found that:story_article_right2Supply chain system abuses led to deals going to companies that "committed a corrupt or fraudulent act in competing for the contract";Officials weren't declaring that close family members, partners or associates had business interests in contracts awarded;Suppliers weren't vetted properly, some didn't have tax clearance, others had no VAT number, or had duplicate addresses and tax numbers.The report submitted to Phiyega had led to reforms, according to a senior source."In one instance, a captain in crime intelligence was suspended after he failed to produce receipts for almost R60000 of slush fund money used."The officer had drawn a R54.000 advance from the fund and, when he failed to account for it, the SAPS deducted the money in four instalments from his salary," the source said."The deductions were from June to September 2014 - in June, a R15,531 deduction was made, with the captain drawing a salary of only R873.21. The message was clear: those looting the fund will be dealt with."Marimuthu said he couldn't comment on the findings "because I haven't seen the report".Mdluli declined to comment...