Pretoria – State witnesses told the Pretoria North Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, that former National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) prosecutor Glynnis Breytenbach had no appropriate authorisation to delete data on her official laptop.
Breytenbach, who is now a Democratic Alliance Member of Parliament, and her former attorney Gerhard Wagenaar face, among others, charges of contravening the NPA Act and for defeating the ends of justice.
Denton Serobatse, an information and systems technology executive manager at the NPA, told the court that when he was approached by a security and risk management executive manager in February 2012 to accompany them to Breytenbach’s office to confiscate her laptop, they found a private information technology (IT) expert busy on the laptop without the necessary authorisation.
However, Serobatse said when they inquired why the private IT expert was busy on the NPA laptop and who approved the move, they were told that he was mirroring the laptop image and that Breytenbach gave the authorisation herself.
Serobatse, who is the third State witness to be called, said the only application he authorised was that of the former NPA head of the integrity unit, Prince Mokotedi, who requested access to Breytenbach’s work email account for investigation purposes.
Another witness, the NPA integrity unit’s internal investigator William Gloster, told the court that he had been the one to lodge a complaint with the South African Police Service (SAPS) against the two accused.
Gloster said Breytenbach and her lawyer made it difficult for them to recover her work laptop. He said when they tried to recover her laptop, Breytenbach had initially told them she had left the device at home.
Gloster said her lawyer had promised to bring the laptop to investigators at a later stage, but had reneged on this undertaking. Gloster said Wagenaar sent them a letter stating that he would not hand over the laptop unless certain undertakings to protect Breytenbach’s privacy rights were made.
The court heard that the laptop was eventually handed over to Gloster and that the services of an IT forensic investigations service provider was sought to clone the laptop. He testified that this led to them discovering that Breytenbach shredded some documents related to the mining case that Breytenbach was handling. She was being internally investigated for her handling of the case.
Prince Mokotedi, who testified as the fifth State witness, said although he was not directly involved in Breytenbach’s investigation, he was the one who authorised internal investigators to carry on with their investigations. He said he intervened when he received a report from investigators that the former prosecutor was refusing to hand over her work laptop. He said he then went to Breytenbach’s office to persuade her to hand over her laptop.
Mokotedi, who is now the Gauteng Hawks boss, also maintained that Breytenbach did not have the necessary authorisation to delete documents on her laptop, adding that some ‘disturbing information’ was discovered on her laptop.
“When the investigations were done some disturbing information was discovered from her laptop which then sparked my unit’s interest to investigate further. We found documents that suggested that Breytenbach was involved in business with another advocate who was representing cases which the accused was a prosecutor in,” said Mokotedi.
The matter was adjourned to Wednesday.
African News Agency