Hawks head Lt-Gen Godfrey Lebeya, in a two-hour-long media briefing on Sunday, laid out the most recent successes of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations for the second quarter of 2024/2025.
From breakthroughs in investigations into Steinhoff to the disbarring of a criminal lawyer and from the conviction of police killers to the successful extradition of alleged fraudster Michael Lomas to face the music for R745m fraud perpetrated against Eskom — Lebeya detailed 40 of their biggest success cases.
He said the unit had been boosted in July by 240 entry-level constables recently graduated from police academies around the country that were among 10,000 trainees recruited in the previous year. They had also gained 51 new vehicles, with another 20 specialised vehicles on the way.
Looking at the most high profile cases resolved in recent months, Lebeya said these involved 818 suspects of which 18 were juristic people.
Most of the arrests were in Gauteng followed by Northwest, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape, with 84 firearms and 2,049 rounds of ammunition seized. On top of this, seven clandestine drug laboratories were dismantled and chemicals valued at more than R17m seized.
Lebeya said of the 272 people sentenced during the quarter under review, 164 were South Africans and 108 foreign nationals. Freezing and forfeiture orders secured amounted to slightly under R73m, with just over R8m deposited into the criminal assets recovery account (CARA).
Lebeya pointed out that the 40 cases he was highlighting represented only 3% of the successes, with killing of police officers remaining their biggest priority.
“There exists a blue wall in South Africa. The wall that divides and shields the good from the bad elements in society... The weaker the wall, the happier the criminals,” he said, referring to the murder of 17 officers in three months.
Some of the cases laid out by Lebeya:
- Five cash-in-transit suspects received a collective 545 years for robbing the Italian Liquor Store in Zwelethemba, Worcester, in May 2018. They forced the staff to open the safe at gunpoint before unsuccessfully trying to force Fidelity guards to open an armoured vehicle. Each of them was sentenced to more than 100 years in total.
- An Eastern Cape racketeering operation was upset after the Hawks investigated attacks targeted on British American Tobacco vehicles between October 28 2013 and June 26 2014. This led to 17 case dockets of aggravated robbery and kidnapping linked to five suspects. The five, including Yanga Nette, 37, Ntando Ntobongwana, 35, and Lazola Mfulana, 41, were convicted of 35 counts of robbery with aggravating circumstances, kidnapping and racketeering.
- In December 2022 Ermelo police arrested Ntsaku Prince Letswele, 27, and Mozambican Junior Jorge Mabele Chauke, 42, for possession of firearms and four rhino horns valued at R876,000. The duo appeared in court on several occasions until they were granted bail. Chauke absconded and a warrant for his arrest was issued. Letswele was granted bail and then arrested again after being caught with two rhino horns valued at R607,000. He was sentenced to 18 years.
- On the drugs front, Spanish national Barrul Borjas Amador, 48, was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport on June 11 2021 with 3.65kg of heroin hidden in his luggage. After being denied bail he was sent for psychiatric observation and was declared fit to stand trial. He was given a 12-year sentence.
- There was a breakthrough in the Steinhoff case after it was discovered that in December 2016 former CEO Markus Jooste had created transactions of no value resulting in an inflated operating profit of about R5.5bn for Steinhoff UK. In December 2017, Jooste resigned after earning more than R650m in four years. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) imposed a R475m fine on Jooste and in March the serious economic offences unit secured arrest warrants for Jooste and Stephanus Johannes Grobler on allegations of fraud, racketeering and contravening the FMA. The suspects were expected to hand themselves over at Pretoria Central SAPS but Jooste committed suicide. Grobler appeared in court and was granted bail of R150,000. Former Steinhof CFO Andries Benjamin La Grange then handed himself over to the Hawks and paid R150,000 bail. The case will go ahead on February 14 2025. Meanwhile Dr Gerhardus Burger, 79, has pleaded guilty to insider trading and been given a five-year suspended sentence.
- Northern Cape Cricket Union financial manager Jean Pierre Van Niekerk, 25, has been sentenced to four years in prison for misappropriating funds owed to his employer into his own bank account. The case was reported to the Hawks by the union after they discovered losses of more than R420,000. Van Niekerk was convicted on 80 counts and declared unfit to possess a firearm.
- Department of home affairs official Judith Salome Zuma was in 2021 found to be operating with a syndicate of foreign nationals, colluding with South African citizens to assist foreign nationals from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Democratic Republic of Congo to obtain South African passports by using their identity documents and biometrics. The foreign nationals fraudulently replaced the South Africans' photos with theirs and assumed their identities. The foreign nationals involved — Oliver Whendle Hurriparsad, 40, Morshed Alam, 26, and Saiful Islam Sojun — were arrested separately in 2022 when they tried to skip the country and return to their home countries. Zuma pleaded guilty and was convicted on 1,159 counts of fraud, corruption, contravening the Immigration Act and the Identification Act and was sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment for facilitating the activities of a syndicate operating within the department of home affairs. Hurriparsad, Alam and Sojun were each sentenced to 12 years.
- An Mpumalanga investigation led to the arrests of 27 traffic officers, examiners and driving school operators for corrupt and fraudulent activities perpetrated in 2021. The matter was bust by crime intelligence led by the Hawks in collaboration with the National Road Traffic Management Corporation. It was found that driver’s licence testing examiners were colluding with driving school owners to issue learners’ and drivers’ licences to applicants without following due processes. Allegations were that during the process of obtaining learners' licences, applicants were assisted or given answers by the examiners who were working with driving school owners to facilitate the exercise. They were given licences without being tested after paying exorbitant amounts of cash. An unconventional sting operation led to the breakthrough, with arrests being made in Sabie, Graskop, Mashishing, Hazyview, Charl Cilliers, Kabokweni, KaNyamazane, Mbombela, Malelane, White River, Calcutta and Verena. Their cases will be heard later this month and next month.
- Another highlight was the first arrest in the Digital Vibes saga. In 2018 a municipal agency falling under the department of co-operative governance and traditional affairs awarded a R3.9m tender to Digital Vibes to render communication services for two years. A former director of the agency, Lizeka Tonjeni, 49, received eight payments totalling R160,000 from Digital Vibes for managing the project — payments she failed to disclose. She was arrested in May 2022 for corruption. She was released on R5,000 bail and ordered to hand in her passport and remain in Gauteng. However, she went to the Eastern Cape and applied for a new passport 17 days before judgment. In may she was convicted on eight counts of fraud and sentenced to five years. More Digital Vibes cases are under investigation.
- The extradition of British national Michael Lomas, 77, has been hailed as a success story. Lomas is alleged to have paid people to influence tenders relating to Eskom between April 2015 and April 2017. It is alleged that a tender was fraudulently awarded to Tubular Construction Project for services, which was initially part of the tender awarded to Alstom S&E Africa. Tubular paid an entity owned by an official from Eskom who was instrumental in the awarding of R745,8m. In December 2019, France Hlakudi, Abram Masango and Hudson Kgomotswane, together with seven juristic people, appeared in court on the allegations of fraud and corruption at Eskom’s Kusile power station project. Lomas skipped the country and went into hiding in the UK. He was arrested in April 2021 and extradited to South Africa last month. He is in custody and the case is postponed to October 28 for docket disclosure.
Lebeya said the Hawks would continue to act against criminality and hold lawbreakers to account.
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