Businessman who corrupted former top cop to stay in jail after failed appeal

A Cape Town businessman who corrupted former Western Cape police commissioner Arno Lamoer by doling out “loans” has failed in his bid to stay out of jail.

A full bench of the high court in Cape Town this week thwarted Mohamed Saleem Dawjee’s bid for freedom . He appealed his 47-year sentence, which is an effective six-year prison term, on the basis that the court “misdirected itself”.

Judge Rosheni Allie jailed Dawjee, Lamoer and former police brigadiers Darius van der Ross, a former Bellville cluster commander, and Colin Govender, a former Cape Town police station commander, for corruption.

Lamoer was jailed for eight years‚ two of which were suspended‚ after admitting to accepting “loans” from Dawjee‚ who also paid for the former commissioner’s clothing and holidays.

According to the Hawks‚ Lamoer “received money in his bank account‚ had his clothing accounts together with a certain holiday paid for by Dawjee”. Van der Ross received “gratifications, which included having his private vehicle filled with petrol in exchange for favours”.

Govender was accused of receiving “unauthorised gratifications amounting to R1.2-million”.

Dawjee and his co-accused faced hundreds of charges ranging from racketeering to corruption, money laundering, defeating the ends of justice and contravening the Fire Controls Arms Act. They entered into a plea and sentencing agreement with the state.

In exchange, the prosecution would not pursue most of the charges against them and they would “abandon their defence regarding the fairness of the trial and admissibility of evidence and change their pleas to guilty to lesser charges” and all charges against Govender’s wife “would be abandoned”.

In his appeal, Dawjee said Allie did not fully consider the agreement he had reached with the state when she handed down sentence, that the crimes did not justify a six-year prison sentence and that the “sentence imposed on each of the individual counts was shockingly inappropriate and shockingly severe”.

He said that Allie also failed to consider the “medical evidence” regarding his “mental state and his depression”.

But the full bench was not convinced and dismissed the appeal.

“In my view the trial court was correct in viewing the offences of corruption as serious,” said Judge Andre Le Grange, who penned the 30-page judgment.

“It is thus not an exaggeration to say that corruption of this kind eats away at the very fabric our society and is the menace of modern democracies. [Dawjee’s] corruption of the most senior police officials in the Western Cape, as described above, is to be deprecated and is in itself an aggravating factor.”