Police blue light tender fraud case postponed to November

The multimillion-rand police blue lights corruption case against former senior officers, including ex-acting national police commissioner Khomotso Phahlane and former Gauteng police commissioner Deliwe de Lange, was postponed to 25 November on Monday.

The co-accused appeared briefly in the Palm Ridge Specialised Crimes Court on charges of corruption, fraud, theft, and money laundering.

However, the case had to be postponed due to an application by Phahlane and former South African Police Service (Saps) deputy national commissioner for human resources management, Lieutenant-General Bonang Mgwenya, for the matter to be struck off the roll.

Phahlane and Mgwenya have argued for the charges to be dismissed due to the “unreasonable delay” in the prosecution of the matter by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).

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The charges are in connection with procurement irregularities involving a R191 million tender to supply emergency warning equipment for Saps in 2017.

The co-accused in the matter included former Gauteng deputy police commissioner Nombhuruza Lettie Napo; Lieutenant-General Ramahlapi Johannes Mokwena; Brigadier James Ramanjalum; Colonel Thomas Dumas Marima and Sergeant Maetapese Joseph Mulaiwa.

The charged civilians are Judy Rose Samantha Andrews and the owner of Instrumentation for Traffic Law
Enforcement, Vimpie Manthatha.

It is alleged that the accused paid R65 million of the R191 million contract to the service provider, Instrumentation
for Traffic Law Enforcement.

A payment of R22 million was stopped at the advanced stage of the NPA’s Investigating Directorate’s (ID’s) investigation into the matter.

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