Deepened corruption and brazen theft within intelligence organs of the state have come under the spotlight before the Zondo commission.
Inspector-general of intelligence Dr Setlhomamaru Dintwe accused the intelligence community of being infested with a culture of using millions of rand to procure non-existent items in a bid to loot and steal.
Dintwe returned to the stand at the inquiry into state capture where he continued his testimony on the rot within the State Security Agency (SSA) and SA Police Service crime intelligence, which he said went beyond endemic nepotism and the use of cash to fund nefarious activities and lifestyles of politicians.
Dintwe said those who benefited from intelligence funds had resorted to using procurement corruptly where they “bought nonexistent things” at inflated prices.
Another instance of brazen theft, according to Dintwe’s testimony, involved purported IT solution procurement for intelligence collection by the crime intelligence where processes were manipulated to favour a particular company but which never delivered the goods.
Dintwe said crime intelligence had rejected an offer from the state-owned Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to provide the IT solution for R7m and instead opted for a company that charged R33m for the same product.
He said his investigation found that no service was ever delivered despite the full payment of the said funds. “I did that [investigation] and I visited crime intelligence personally with members of my office. We discovered that it was never delivered to crime intelligence,” he said.
Dintwe also testified on how SAPS crime intelligence tried to procure a “grabber” at an exorbitant inflated price, with most of the money allegedly reserved for buying votes at the ANC’s 2017 national elective conference.
“It was probable in this instance because the grabber's original price is R7m but here in this case they want R45m,” Dintwe said.
Dintwe said he had been approached by former adviser to transport minister Fikile Mbalula, who was the police minister, Bo Mbindwane, who claimed that there were plans to influence the ANC conference by foreign people and that there would be a need for the grabber which would cost R45m.
“The reason why he called me was to say that the divisional commissioner [SAPS intelligence] was scared or did not want to purchase it because I was conducting some investigations with a previous procurement,” he said.
He said he had made assurance that the grabber could be procured if done through following proper processes, but that purchase was canned after it was blocked by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) after the company involved was flagged for previous irregular procurement within the SAPS.
Dintwe said in another instance of looting, SSA officials had claimed that they had procured an anti-spying software to protect principals within the agency from having their gadgets being “intercepted by foreign agencies” which cost millions of rand in licence fees for a period of 12 months.
“But what we found is that in fact, the software was never delivered and the investigators in my office were actually tipped that it was never delivered and that the licence was about to expire. We went there and satisfied ourselves as it was supposed to be still there. There was confirmation that it was not available,” said Dintwe.
Dintwe earlier claimed that an SSA member had made off with R3.5m "for intelligence work" only to claim that he had lost it without explanation, before taking early retirement.
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