‘A lesson in state capture’: Cashing in on 2010 World Cup

Christmas 2009 came a little early for Thoshan Panday.

The Durban businessman’s first South African Police Service sponsored payday was in November of that year.

Last year, the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture heard how Goldcoast Trading CC – one of five companies Panday is said to have ended up spreading R47 million worth of dodgy police tenders – had been struggling to stay afloat.

“The activity between January 2009 to October 2009 shows that Goldcoast Trading was actually struggling financially with several cheques returned unpaid or deliberately cancelled.

“However, from the first payment received from the SA Police Service [Saps] on 20 November 2009, the financial woes of Gold Coast Trading came to an abrupt end,” former head of the Hawks in KwaZulu-Natal, Major-General Johan Booysen, said, quoting from a police report at the commission last April.

“It appears so profitable that from 20 November 2009 to 24 December 2009, the Saps paid R2.75 million into the account of Gold Coast Trading”.

It took less than five months from that first payday for the bean counters to smell a rat.

The then-head of finance for the Saps in KZN was reconciling the 2010 budget when he discovered what the state has since described as the “astronomical” travel expenditure that was suddenly being incurred – and allegedly Goldcoast was behind it all.

Now, after more than 10 years Panday – and three high-ranking officers who allegedly helped him swindle the state – are in the dock: On Friday, Panday and Colonel Navin Madhoe, from the Saps supply chain management (SCM) department, were arrested.

They appeared in the Durban Magistrate’s Court later that day and were released on bail of R100,000 and R10,000 respectively.

Two more suspects in the case – KZN’s former police commissioner Mmamonnye Ngobeni and Captain Aswin Narainpershad, also from SCM – are also expected to hand themselves over.

Wayne Duvenage, from the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), said yesterday that the wheels of justice were starting to turn was a good sign.

“Obviously people like Panday were protected and they manipulated the criminal justice system, but it’s catching up with them now,” Duvenage said.

He said, though, that the fallout had been devastating.

“People’s careers have been ruined and we’ve lost excellent people who could really have been making a difference and fast-tracking these cases,” Duvenage said, with reference to the police officers who had become caught in the crossfire over the course of the last decade.

The Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution’s Lawson Naidoo, meanwhile, said Panday’s case told the story of what state capture was all about.

“It was about the capture of the police, the National Prosecuting Authority [NPA] and the Hawks,” he said.

“The fact that the NPA withdrew these charges at the time tells us the story of what state capture really is and how the institutions of state were manipulated.”

The state’s case is that Madhoe and Narainpershad were Panday’s inside men and that he plied them with flights, hotel stays, exercise equipment and even a car to ensure a tranche of tenders – mainly to provide accommodation for police deployments in the run-up to and during the 2020 Fifa World Cup but also for miscellaneous goods and services such as water bottles and blankets.

Panday and Madhoe were also fingered in an alleged attempt to bribe Booysen with R1.42m in cash, to make the initial investigation go away.

Ngobeni, meanwhile, is said to have scored a lavish birthday party for her husband, Lucas – also a policeman – in exchange for her efforts to sink the probe.

At the commission, Booysen testified at one point that former president Jacob Zuma’s son, Edward, also paid him a visit and urged him to unfreeze a R15 million payment due to Panday.

Booysen said Edward had disclosed he was a silent partner of Panday’s.

Edward has, however, denied the claims.

But in late 2011, the first of a number of articles placing Booysen at the centre of a now widely discredited narrative that he was running a “rogue” squad appeared in the Sunday Times.

And by the end of the following year, Booysen and almost 30 of his colleagues were facing criminal charges.

The charges were eventually all dropped last year, but the case against Panday was finally reinstated in 2018.

Who is in the firing line?

Thoshan Panday

The Durban businessman is charged in his personal capacity as well as in his capacity as a representative of five companies he allegedly spread R47 million’s worth of dodgy police tenders across.

He faces more than 200 counts of fraud, 13 counts of corruption, six counts of forgery and two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud, forgery and corruption.

Mmamonnye Ngobeni

The former police commissioner was suspended because of her links to Panday back in 2016.

In 2018, just before the probe, she resigned. Ngobeni is expected to face charges of both fraud and corruption.

Navin Madhoe

As a line manager in the Saps’ SCM department, Madhoe’s responsibilities included sourcing quotes.

When he appeared before the commission last year, Booysen said Madhoe was at the time still working in the same position as he had been at the time of his alleged crimes. Madhoe faces more than 200 counts of fraud, six of forgery and counts of corruption.

Aswin Narainpershad

Narainpershad also worked in the SCM department.

He is expected to face more than 200 counts of fraud, six of forgery and four of conspiracy to commit fraud, forgery and corruption.

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