Sunday Tribune

‘NPA hampered by saboteurs’

SAMKELO MTSHALI samkelo.thulasizwe@inl.co.za

THE Hawks and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) have their work cut out for them in attempting to bring to book those implicated in the state capture project – a mission unlikely to be achieved unless an independent body was brought in.

This was the view of Advocate Paul Hoffman, director of Accountability Now, who said that there was a need for compliance with the Constitutional Court decision of March 2011 which required Parliament to promulgate remedial legislation that created an efficient and effective, adequately independent corruption body. The fifth and final part of the report was handed over to President Cyril Ramaphosa by Chief Justice Raymond Zondo on Wednesday evening following several delays which the commission put down to “certain challenges”.

Hoffman said that the government response to dealing with those implicated in wrongdoing in the report was to hand over to the Hawks as the investigative body and the NPA as the prosecuting authority. He said unless a body with effectiveness, efficiency and adequate resources was established to investigate and prosecute, there would be no progress.

“What we have at the moment is the Hawks, the NPA and within the NPA the Investigating Directorate, are not cutting it. They are not getting the job right, and will not get the job right, because they have been hollowed out by state capture. There are saboteurs within their ranks, that’s their terminology not mine. If they were to try and catch up with those responsible for state capture they would be sabotaged in their efforts to do so,” Hoffman said.

He said that what can be said in the commission’s favour is that it had told South Africans who was involved and what was done, but it had not told South Africans why it was allowed to happen and how to prevent it from happening again.

“Those last two questions are of historical significance, but how to prevent state capture from happening again is at the heart of the good that the commission report can do for South Africa because they haven’t grappled with that question properly,” Hoffman said.

Some of the country’s top corruption watchdogs have called on the NPA to expedite the arrests and prosecutions of those involved in facilitating the state capture project which the report says saw R73 billion syphoned off South Africa by the controversial Gupta brothers.

Karam Singh, executive director of Corruption Watch, the country’s foremost watchdog, said that the release of the final instalment of the report should now be followed by concrete processes and investigations that seek to bring to book those involved in state capture.

“It is equally clear that the huge investment of time, money, and energy spent over these past years must not have been in vain, but must clear the way for criminal justice institutions to do their work in securing justice for the many people who have suffered as a result of the grand theft and corruption that we have witnessed,” Singh said.

Wayne Duvenage, CEO of the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse, said that the work of the commission had done the groundwork and did a lot of the legwork for the NPA and the Investigative Directorate.

“Now it’s for them to comb those reports and press ahead with the various recommendations of criminal charges as Zondo says in a number of recommendations,” Duvenage said.

Given that four other reports have been released, Duvenage said that not enough had been done to apprehend those implicated in the first four parts of the report, although there was some activity on Transnet with the arrest of former Transnet CEO Siyabonga Gama.

“The NPA could have already laid charges against those implicated in the earlier reports and didn’t have to wait for the final one to be issued. But, it’s not that they haven’t done anything, as we’ve seen Gama and others arrested and charged on the Transnet matter. We are also mindful of the fact that the NPA is under a lot of pressure as they’ve still got a lot of everyday crime like robberies, corruption, rape and murder to deal with every day and it’s hard to try and deal with everyday stuff and catch up with 10 years backlog of the state capture years,” Duvenage said.

He added that this was no excuse, but the NPA needed to be capacitated.

Attempts to get comment from the NPA proved fruitless as its spokesperson Advocate Mthunzi Mhaga did not respond to written questions which he had requested when called for comment this week.

METRO

en-za

2022-06-26T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-06-26T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://sundaytribune.pressreader.com/article/281560884476673

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