Pretoria - Former police commissioner Khomotso Phahlane and his five co-accused appeared at the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court on Wednesday where their matter was postponed to March 10, 2023.
Phahlane and Lieutenant-Colonel Godfrey Mahwayi, Major-General Maanda Obert Nemutandzhela, Major-General Mankosana Agnes Makhele and businessmen Inbanathan Kistiah and Avendra Naidoo are facing charges of fraud, corruption, theft and contravention of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) pertaining to two police tenders to a tune of R54 million issued in 2016.
Investigating Directorate spokesperson Sindisiwe Seboka said on December 21, 2016, the SAPS Crime Intelligence Division embarked on emergency procurement of software tools or systems.
One of the softwares, RIPJAR, was intended to collect and monitor information from social media platforms on the instigators of the university students’ #FeesMustFall protests.
However, it was revealed that these “emergency” response measures to #FeesMustFall came about in December 2016 when the protests had started in October 2015.
Furthermore, they allegedly tried to buy the RIPJAR software from a company that was not involved in software engineering, but was a security alarms and surveillance cameras company.
“The owners of the so-called competing companies were friends, who in fact and in truth, were involved in cover quoting. The cover quote was supplied to Inbanathan Kistiah by the former husband of the sole director of a company called Perfect Source, which was a human resource recruitment company,” said Seboka.
The other software procured was a mobile communication encryption platform named Daedalus, which was solely used for encrypting calls and wiping out cellular records and messages and was allegedly obtained by deviation from normal procurement processes for the contracts (signed and processed on the same day) and payment was made on December 22, a day after approval.
The Daedalus software was the same software that was used to encrypt voice calls made by SAPS management at the time when Phahlane was under investigation by Ipid.
“The purpose of Daedalus was to encrypt voice calls made by management of the SAPS at the time when Phahlane was under investigation by Ipid. He was being investigated for the ‘Blue Lights’ police tender and other irregular procurement that happened during his tenure. Daedalus made it impossible for investigators to get call records from cellphone providers,” Seboka said.
The accused were released on bail of R5000, R10 000, R50 000 and three of the accused were released on R20 000 bail each.
IOL