Lieutenant-General Richard Mdluli, the man tipped to become SA’s next police commissioner, lost his bid for legal aid to pay for his lawyer yesterday.
At the same time, the National Prosecuting Authority suspended the prosecutor who has pushed for his prosecution on murder charges.
Specialised Commercial Crimes Unit prosecutor advocate Glynnis Breytenbach was apparently suspended on grounds unrelated to the Mdluli case.
The man facing an inquest for the murder of his ex-girlfriend’s husband, Oupa Ramogibe, wanted taxpayers to pay for his high-profile – and notoriously expensive – lawyer, Ike Motloung.
But Boksburg Magistrate’s Court magistrate Jurg Viviers rejected his application, ordering all relevant parties to be ready for the murder inquest trial date in September, regardless of whether they can afford their legal assistance.
This prompted Motloung to call for a court review of Viviers’s decision.
Mdluli came under fire recently for the alleged misuse and abuse of state-allocated funds, appointing numerous relatives as secret agents within Crime Intelligence, as well as using funds to equip his Dawn Park, Boksburg, home with a R150 000 security system.
The details of the case emerged in statements by Hawks investigators in a secret report submitted to acting police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi in mid-April.
Now Mdluli may be facing theft, murder and fraud charges for Ramogibe’s murder.
Doctored case dockets, missing files and even the disappearance of evidence in a rape case have been attributed to Mdluli and three other suspects – court orderly Samuel Dlomo, 49, Colonel Nkosana Sebastian Ximba, 38, and Lieutenant-Colonel Mtunzi-Omhle Mthembeni Mtunzi, 52.
Last year, the State argued that Mdluli, who commanded the Vosloorus police station’s detective branch between 1997 and 1999, got his junior officers to help him hunt down, kidnap and kill his girlfriend’s new husband, Ramogibe, in the late 1990s. It was only last year that the decade-old love triangle came to light.
Mdluli was suspended last year in connection with the 1999 kidnapping and murder. But charges against him and his three co-accused were withdrawn, sparking the inquest into the murder, which has now been set down for September 3 after the review of the financial assistance has been settled.
Mdluli had also been charged for defrauding the police and a Pretoria car dealership of more than R90 000 and for causing it to lose a further R1.28 million.
However, all the charges were withdrawn and Mdluli was reinstated.
It was these charges that apparently played a role in Breytenbach’s suspension, but the National Prosecuting Authority has dismissed the claims as “pure speculation”, with Breytenbach’s lawyer, Gerhard Wagenaar, also distancing himself from these claims.
NPA head of communications Bulelwa Makeke said yesterday that Breytenbach’s suspension was related to “her other work”.
She would not go into much detail, but when the NPA first slapped Breytenbach with a notice of suspension in February, its acting head, Nomgcobo Jiba, said the suspension was related to Breytenbach’s handling of the investigation into charges that mining rivals Kumba Iron Ore and politically connected Imperial Crown Trading had brought against each other.
Yesterday, Wagenaar maintained Breytenbach was still in the dark about the grounds for her suspension, dismissing as “rubbish” Makeke’s statement that Breytenbach had failed over the past three months to provide the NPA with “reasons why she shouldn’t be suspended”.
Makeke had said: “She was given more than enough time to respond. She didn’t give reasons as to why she shouldn’t be suspended (after) being given notice for suspension in February.”
But Wagenaar dismissed her statement as “untrue”.
“We’ve asked them for information. They haven’t supplied us with information. We are waiting for the investigations to be concluded,” he said.
Responding to Breytenbach’s suspension, the DA said it would help establish the sequence of events leading to Breytenbach’s suspension as it was a matter that had “potentially the gravest conceivable consequences for the administration of justice”.
Dene Smuts, the DA’s justice and constitutional development spokeswoman, said: “The suspension has been widely interpreted as intimidation of a prosecutor who insists on doing her work without fear or favour, and who resisted the dropping of fraud charges against Crime Intelligence boss Richard Mdluli, although the matter cited in the suspension notice is the Imperial Crown Trading and Kumba case.”
Breytenbach had to step down as a prosecutor in the Kumba matter after lawyers for Imperial questioned her conduct. - The Star