Pretoria - The 15 suspects from Mogalakwena local municipality who had been nabbed for tender fraud and corruption were released by the Mokopane Magistrate’s Court this week.
Their case was struck off the roll because the Hawks and the SAPS arrested them without a warrant.
However, speaking to the Pretoria News yesterday, Hawks spokesperson Captain Marimba Maluleke said the suspects were not off the hook yet because the directorate had now applied for a warrant to re-arrest them.
He said: “The case being struck off the roll does not mean that the charges are dropped.
“Their lawyers argued in court that the police didn’t have a warrant when they arrested them and the magistrate released them. Things like this happen and we will regroup.
“We are still busy with those investigations.”
The 15 included former senior municipal officials, company directors and the wife of a municipal official.
The municipality, which has been under administration for the past decade, has been marred by financial irregularities, corruption, tender irregularities and political instability that has seen infighting among ANC councillors.
On Tuesday the Pretoria News reported that the corruption investigating team descended on the embattled municipality to make the arrests.
Among goods seized during the arrests was a BMW 1 series belonging to the girlfriend of one of the suspects.
The car is suspected to be a gift.
Maluleke said that they had initially arrested the suspects because they allegedly demanded gratification from service providers, and the municipality paid money to service providers for services not rendered amounting to about R15 million between 2017 and 2020.
In October last year the Hawks seized R1.4m as part of the investigation.
The municipality’s woes started after it was summoned before Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts in 2019 following poor audit reports by the Auditor-General.
More trouble followed in the embattled municipality, with the murder of municipal public accounts committee chairperson Vaaltyn Kekana and ANC Youth League leader Ralph Kanyane.
The two were vocal about the municipality’s poor service delivery and corruption.
They were both sprayed with bullets by gunmen in Mokopane, outside Polokwane, when they were sitting in a car.
The killers were never found.
Pretoria News