Bizarre bribery case in court

A PROSECUTOR accused of soliciting a R1 000 bribe, admitted to being a drug user in her plea before the Durban Regional Court and claimed she had given an advocate money to buy her drugs.

Phumzile Msimango pleaded not guilty to soliciting a bribe from advocate, Alli Essop, to arrange for an accused not to be fingerprinted so he would not get a criminal record after he was convicted.

The State had alleged at the time of her arrest that R500 of the marked bills were found in Msimango’s purse and the balance in her office.

According to her plea statement submitted this week, Durban prosecutor Msimango met Essop in 2010 when she went to buy drugs. She said a friendship developed when Essop told her he could get drugs from a different dealer at a cheaper price.

But Essop has described her version as fiction. She said she would give him the money for the drugs and he would buy them and deliver them to her.

Msimango also said her employer, the National Prosecuting Authority, knew of her drug problem and that she had undergone a rehabilitation programme.

However, she said she was still a drug user, but hid it from her employer. She claimed that from December 2012, she had given Essop R3 000 to buy drugs for her, but he apparently kept evading her and did not deliver the drugs.

They had apparently argued in July 2013 about his failure to deliver the drugs and she had told him to pay back her money. She said the next day, Essop had arrived and had thrown R1 000 on her desk and apparently told her he would pay her back as and when he had the rest of the money. She was arrested soon afterwards and said she thought the R1 000 was part payment on the loan.

She claimed she told the police she believed Essop set her up because she had threatened to report him to the Society of Advocates.

Essop testified this week to not knowing Msimango “from a bar of soap” and that she was making up the story.

Constable Riaad Adam testified that he had taken Essop’s statement and had received authority from the Director of Public Prosecutions to go ahead with the trap.

He said he had made photocopies of the money before Essop gave it to Msimango.

He had apparently told Essop to text him once he had given her the money, and once he received the text he and members of the Local Criminal Records Centre called her out of court and searched her office. He said he found R500 in her purse in banknotes which matched the trap money and the rest of the money in her office.

Just after State advocate, Krishen Shah, closed his case, Msimango’s attorney, Ben Dlamini, made an application for the discharge of the charges, which magistrate Siphiwe Hlophe denied. The matter was adjourned until December.