The conviction and punishment of those behind state capture and large-scale corruption within state owned entities could take years due to the complexity of the financial crimes committed.
This is according to National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) Shamila Batohi who on Wednesday addressed parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) on behalf of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).
The NPA, the Hawks and the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) were all appearing before Scopa to update lawmakers on the progress made in corruption investigations relating to Covid-19 funds and state owned entities.
Eskom and Transnet have been revealed over the years, including before the commission of inquiry into state capture to have been among the worst victims of theft and looting by the Gupta family and their associates as billions of rands were swindled.
Batohi said while the Investigative Directorate (ID) had been created by her office in 2019 to specially focus on high profile and complex financial crimes, it was still difficult to expedite successful prosecution due to the complexity of the criminal activities.
“These are the very complex corruption matters. If we get cases through to court within two to three years, we will be doing extremely well and after that, if these matters get finalised in a year or two, I think that will be extremely well. When you look at people at the top of this highly complicated ladder and web of corruption, it takes extremely long,” Batohi said.
This comes as the NPA and other law enforcement agencies were accused of not effecting enough arrests and prosecutions of those suspected despite a mounting volume of evidence against them.
Batohi stressed that the NPA was making strides in ensuring that many cases were investigated and prosecuted successfully.
“I think no one more than us in law enforcement knows and understand – in particular in the prosecuting authority – of making impact on the cases that we take to court. Outside of the ID, in the cases that are in the Specialised Commercial Crimes Unit (SCCU) space, there a number of cases that have been finalised and there is a lot that is happening in that space,” she said.
ID head Hermione Cronje said the ID was unable to talk about some of its investigations as this would lead to them being compromised and also prejudice those who were implicated.
“It is a challenge to speak about ongoing investigations, especially ones where the individuals who are being investigated have not been charged, so they do not know the charges,” he said.
Cronje said a charge sheet would be finalized in the next three months in relation to the alleged criminal activities by Gupta associate Salim Essa and his Regiments at Transnet where they are accused of laundering millions of rand to offshore shelf companies after a dubious transaction advisory contracts with the entity.
“There were two issues holding up the finalization of the charge sheet in that matter. The first was an execution of the warrant to extract the relevant data off the Regiment service as well as a forensic report that set out the financial flows from Transnet to regiments and then to the numerous shelf companies that the funds were transferred into before they ended up with Salim Essa and (Gupta ally Kuben) Moodely” Cronje said.
Cronje said the ID, which currently had 21 financial investigators, was looking to recruit some of the investigators working for the Zondo commission when it concludes to address its capacity challenges.
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