Durban - KwaZulu-Natal provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Mmamonnye Ngobeni allegedly burst into tears when confronted by police watchdog Ipid’s investigators about her alleged “corrupt” relationship with fraud suspect Thoshan Panday.
But while she brandished receipts – saying that she had paid Panday to organise a birthday party for her husband, Brigadier Lucas Ngobeni – she refused to give the investigators copies.
She also told a senior Hawks officer that the provincial Hawks head, Major-General Johan Booysen, was a “snake” and that she and the national commissioner, Riah Phiyega, were busy “sorting him out”.
These allegations are contained in statements attached to an affidavit by Booysen filed in the Durban High Court on Friday, in response to claims by Ngobeni that he was making “scandalous, vexatious, hearsay and irrelevant” allegations against her in a court application he made to interdict Phiyega from dismissing him.
Booysen – who has been cleared of all criminal “death squad” racketeering charges and internal disciplinary charges – alleges there is a plot to oust him because he trod on the wrong toes by keeping alive an investigation into Panday’s alleged role in a R60 million police accommodation fraud during the 2010 soccer World Cup.
He alleges that Ngobeni instructed him to stop the investigation and, soon after, Panday paid for her husband’s birthday party. He says that an independent forensic audit “reveals a possible corrupt relationship” between her and Panday.
Ngobeni has applied to have these allegations “struck out” from the record, saying they are all lies. She claims she has been cleared of wrongdoing and the criminal case opened against her with regard to the birthday party has been closed.
She says the R60m fraud investigation has also been stopped with a decision by a prosecutor to withdraw charges.
In response in his affidavit, Booysen has put up what he says is proof from the police’s crime administration system that these cases are still active and are being investigated by Ipid. He says Ngobeni knows this because the Ipid investigators visited her in October last year and told her so.
In a statement, Ipid investigator Baatseba Motihale says she and her boss, a Mrs Maharaj, met the provincial commissioner on October 8 last year and told her of a complaint by a DA MP about the birthday party.
“She showed anger and was crying and asking why do we allow ourselves to be used by the DA. She told us that a decision has been taken not to prosecute her. She said General Booysen was behind the plot and that her envisaged reappointment as provincial commissioner is challenged because she is a black woman and does not have straight hair.”
Booysen has also put up an affidavit by the provincial head of financial services, a Brigadier Kemp, that he, too, was instructed by Ngobeni to stop the fraud investigation. He said she became “very angry” when he attempted to give feedback about the investigation to the national head office and said this “must stop”.
“This became the main issue and not the issue of the high expenditure for detachment duties … it seemed to be a sensitive issue,” he said.
Booysen has also attached an affidavit by Trevor White of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the company tasked with doing a forensic investigation into the fraud allegations. He says there is documented proof that Panday paid for the birthday party on May 29, 2010, “and this gift or gratification to Ngobeni” was done just before an SAPS payment to Panday’s Goldcoast trading of R26m on June 10 that year.
Booysen says his allegations that both the provincial and national commissioners did not want him to return to his post were backed up by an affidavit of Brigadier Simon Madonsela, who says that at a meeting in December last year, Ngobeni told him and a Colonel Mhlongo that “they are busy sorting out Booysen”.
Madonsela says: “She said she believed that we are the boys of Booysen … she told me to promise her that I am not going to investigate her.”
The matter will be in court on Monday but is expected to be adjourned with the interdict remaining in place.
The Mercury understands that the Ipid investigations are nearing completion and fresh decisions will be made on whether anyone will be prosecuted.
The Mercury