McBride alleges vote-buying at ANC’s 2017 elective conference – report

An affidavit by the director of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid), Robert McBride, claimed money from an alleged tender fraud by the South African Police Service (SAPS) was meant to be laundered so votes could be bought at the ANC’s elective conference in December 2017, TimesLive reports.

Incumbent governing party president Cyril Ramaphosa beat Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in the election race for the presidency of the party, taking over the reins from Jacob Zuma.

National Police Commissioner General Khehla Sitole and McBride are facing off in court, with the former refusing to declassify documents the Ipid needs to conduct three corruption cases.

The police say the documents contain sensitive information relating to state security and intelligence and that declassifying them would infringe the law and disclose sensitive information with the potential to compromise national security and expose intelligence-gathering mechanisms and sources.

According to the police, disclosing the information would expose the identities of operatives and confidential sources, reveal information about intelligence methods and application, impair intelligence systems and activities, and potentially endanger the lives of those involved in gathering and assessing the information.

However, according to the Ipid, the said documents had been classified illegal so that a number of crimes could be concealed, which included corruption allegedly involving management within the police.

It was reported that a company called Brainwave Projects, its trading name being I-View Integrated Systems, is at the centre of the allegations.

The company was allegedly given an estimated R54 million by the police through a number of irregularly awarded contracts.

The Ipid director said in his affidavit that an investigation by the police watchdog found that in 2016, during the fees-must-fall protests, I-View was paid R33 million by the police’s crime intelligence for software used for monitoring social media sites and that procurement processes had not been followed.

Another investigation the Ipid is carrying out is the procurement of a cellphone grabber, which is used for intercepting phone calls, at an inflated price.

I-View was allegedly paid R45 million for the cellphone grabber, a device whose market value is estimated to be between R7 million and R10 million.

The money was meant to be laundered so it could be used to buy votes at the ANC’s elective conference in 2017, McBride alleged.

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