[imagesource:ofmnews]

The South African police forces have a long way to go to get our country out of its many red-flag grey status boxes for being one of the most corrupt and dangerous countries in the world.

But, they are making decent strides so far, with key changes to the Hawks’ top management being a solid step forward.

According to Hawks head Lt-Gen Godfrey Lebeya, who presented the entity’s successes at a media briefing on Sunday, the component head of serious organised crime, Maj-Gen Alfred Khana, will be retiring from office on August 31. He will be succeeded by Brig Hennie Flynn with effect from September 1, 2024.

Khana (pictured above) was accused of fumbling the Steinhoff case and sabotaging the investigation into Prasa’s corruption exposed in Jacques Pauw’s book Our Poisoned Land, TimesLIVE reports.

Additionally, on September 30, the divisional commissioner Lt- Gen Senaba Mosipi will retire from office and the successor who is to be announced on September 1 will be appointed with effect from October 1, he said.

Otherwise, the Hawks have investigated more than 18,461 cases involving 752,712 charges and worth more than R1bn from the previous financial year. This includes a 185-year jail term for possession of unlicensed firearms, an R600 million SARS fraud trial and the Zizi Kodwa R1.6 million kickbacks corruption case involving EOH boss Jehan Mackay.

“Of these cases, 5,616 involving 11,972 accused [are] before the various courts in the country while 1,788 are receiving attention by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in order to decide on prosecution or otherwise.

“A total number of 673 suspects representing 637 natural persons and 36 juristic persons [entities] were secured before the various courts in the country. Of the first, 489 are South Africans while 148 are foreign nationals,” Lebeya said.

Most of the arrests were made in Gauteng, followed by KwaZulu-Natal, North West, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape.

The Hawks have been successfully cracking down on a range of crimes such as serious corruption and organised crimes, fraud, money laundering, police killings, cash-in-transit (CIT) robberies, illegal mining, damage to essential infrastructure and crimes against the state.

Talking about organized crime, Lebeya mentioned that the Hawks conducted over 34 project-driven investigations in the last quarter, but only managed to close four of them successfully, leading to 35 arrests. He highlighted a specific case involving a Namibian national who was caught with 12 guns at a police roadblock. The man was successfully prosecuted and handed a hefty 185-year jail sentence for multiple charges, including possession of illegal firearms, obstructing justice, and reckless driving. Lebeya clarified that the man will serve 20 years in prison.

In the serious corruption category, Lebeya mentioned the arrests of Kodwa and Mackay, along with their court appearances, as well as the 46-year prison sentences given to two former police officers and a 10-year sentence for a Pakistani national.

When it came to serious commercial crime, Lebeya highlighted several cases, including the arrests and court appearances of former KPMG bursary specialist Fidelis Moema and his co-accused, the arrest of a former CFO at Star Schools along with her family, and the staggering 291-year sentence handed to a former MMG employee for fraud.

Additionally, a transnational organised crime group was slapped with an 11,052-year combined prison term for “391 counts of money laundering, fraud, forgery, uttering, assisting another to benefit from unlawful activities, acquisition and possession or use of proceeds of unlawful activities” among other offences.

Plus 10 SA Revenue Service (Sars) employees – stationed at Ficksburg Bridge, Maseru Bridge and Van Rooyen’s Hek Bridge – who had allegedly facilitated 333 transactions amounting to R653,500,455 appeared in Lady Brand magistrate’s court on June 10 and July 16 on charges of fraud, money laundering and contravention of the Tax Administration Act among others, he said.

Keep up the hard work, Hawks.

[source:timeslive]