Cape Town - Western Cape police have twice raided the home of their former acting head of crime intelligence, allegedly for using fraudulent number plates.
However, insiders have claimed that the raids were a ploy to harass and intimidate him, apparently for the role he played in the arrest of the Western Cape Provincial Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Arno Lamoer.
Former crime intelligence acting head Brigadier Mzwandile Tiyo was a project manager of the team that investigated a corrupt relationship between Lamoer and Cape Town businessman Saleem Dawjee.
Tiyo also instructed crime intelligence operatives to open a case of defeating the ends of justice against police boss Riah Phiyega after she alerted Lamoer about an investigation against him.
Lamoer’s telephone conversations were legally recorded by crime intelligence operatives monitoring his calls after allegedly showing that he was associated with Dawjee, whom they were investigating.
In October 2013, Western Cape crime intelligence operatives opened a case against Phiyega.
Lamoer was charged together with Brigadier Darius van der Ross and a married couple, Sharon and Kolindren Govender.
They face more than 109 charges including corruption, racketeering and money laundering.
In another turn of events, this past week eight police officers arrived at Tiyo’s house and told him they wanted to search it.
He refused to let them do so, and they asked to search his car instead. The officers were armed with a search warrant dated March 6.
Also on Thursday, police raided Tiyo’s home in Paarl, apparently looking for false registration number plates.
The Mercury’s sister paper, The Star, has seen an application by Tiyo for extension to use a false number plate as he was working on an undercover operation.
Western Cape police spokeswoman Brigadier Novela Potelwa insisted that this was in connection with a drunken driving case.
She said the matter was struck off the roll in April last year as the docket arrived late in court.
Potelwa said a decision had been taken to continue with the investigation.
She said: “There is nothing untoward with regard to the execution of the warrant.”
Political Bureau