National police commissioner Khehla Sitole has been served with a notice of intention to suspend, according to reports.
It is understood that Sitole received a letter from President Cyril Ramaphosa last week, asking for representations as to why he should not be suspended.
The news of Sitole’s alleged notice of suspension was first reported last night by a broadcast channel.
According to reports, Sitole was found to have breached his duties as a police officer, in terms of the Independent Police Investigating Directorate (Ipid) Act, by intentionally delaying a number of Ipid investigations into corrupt procurement deals within the Crime Intelligence environment.
Requests for comment or confirmation of the suspension from SAPS and Ipid have not yet been responded to.
It is believed his imminent suspension is linked to an investigation into the R45 million “Nasrec grabber” issue.
Earlier this year, the national commissioner and two other SAPS senior officials lost their application for leave to appeal against an earlier judgment regarding the declassification of documents.
In January, Judge Norman Davis ordered the police to hand over several secret documents to the Ipid for the purpose of investigating suspected tender fraud and corruption within police ranks.
Judge Davis found that Sitole, as well as Francinah Vuma and Lebeona Tshumane, both lieutenant-generals, had breached their duties by failing to furnish Ipid with information and documents relating to their investigation into the alleged fraud and corruption. The three top cops challenged the ruling.
Ipid, who have been waiting for more than three years for these documents, and the SAPS, have been facing off in court as senior police management refused to hand over the “highly secret” papers.
Due to the ongoing court battle, the result is Ipid still has not received the documents to enable them to start the investigation.
Sitole and the others maintain the documents were classified and should not be made available to Ipid.
The cops insist that the documents in question need to first be “declassified” and that this should be done via a request to the chairperson of Parliament’s joint standing committee on intelligence. But the judge said this argument was legally unsound and that the officers were ignoring the duties imposed by law on them.
Political Bureau