Hawks have glut of unsolved cases
THE Hawks are sitting with approximately 1 500 unresolved corruption cases as a result of government departments refusing to co-operate with investigators, Hawks spokesperson Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi has told Independent Media.
Mulaudzi was responding to concerns from the Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police about a high number of corruption cases that remained unresolved “for up to eight years since initial reporting”.
“There are many reasons… including non-co-operation from entities or government departments that needed to assist in the investigations.
Other challenges included capacity, court availability and feedback from third parties.
Mulaudzi said the approximately 1 500 cases under investigation involved corruption, organised crime and commercial crimes.
He said the Hawks continued to engage with unco-operative government departments and entities “and if all fails we subpoena them”.
“We are diligent with our work and despite all the challenges we are committed to delivering on our mandate,” he said.
Police committee chairperson Francois Beukman said yesterday the committee had called for urgent steps to deal with “corruption and serious commercial crime investigations”.
Beukman said the committee learnt about the delay in prosecutions during its meeting with former national director of public prosecutions Shaun Abrahams and acting head of Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations Lieutenant-General Yolisa Matakata in May. “While the committee is well aware that some of these cases are complex and require time to attain the necessary information, it is nonetheless of the view that for justice to be upheld and to be seen to be upheld, it is only fair that prosecution is done within a reasonable timeframe,” Beukman said.
The committee had invited the Justice and Correctional Services and Police departments to establish their plans to deal with “blockages that hamper timely prosecutions”.
NPA spokesperson Luvuyo Mfaku said these were “not cases that are fully investigated and are sitting with the NPA without being prosecuted”.
“Once a case is fully investigated and finalised we take a decision to take the matter to court,” said Mfaku.
Corruption Watch executive director David Lewis said it was known that there was a lack of prosecution of corruption cases because of the lack of investigations. “We… will focus more of our attention this year and next year on the prosecutorial services because if they are not effective we are not going to deal with corruption,” he said.