Cops give robbers blue light escort
Goods used in heists, ATM blasts
Two police officers allegedly escorted criminals, in marked official vehicles, as they crisscrossed provinces selling explosives to gangs involved in ATM bombing and cash-intransit robberies.
The two cops were among the 10 suspects who appeared in two different courts and provinces yesterday.
Their cases are considered a major breakthrough by the elite police investigating unit, the Hawks.
The gang, which was targeted in an undercover operation by the Hawks, allegedly operated in Gauteng and Free State.
“They drove under police escort from the Free State to Gauteng to sell these explosives to gangs involved in cashin-transit robberies,’’ a police source close to the investigation told Sowetan yesterday.
The two officers appeared in the Virginia Magistrate’s Court in Free State for alleged corruption following their arrest on Tuesday.
They allegedly helped the gang avoid stop and searches by other law-enforcement agencies by affording them an illegal police escort.
The men were arrested in a joint operation between the Hawks’ National Bureau for Illegal Firearms Control and Priority Violent Crime Unit, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) and Crime Intelligence in Thabong, Odendaalsrus, Virginia and Theunissen in Free State.
The Hawks said the gang, aided by the two cops, supplied other criminal syndicates with the explosives which were being used to blast ATMs‚ cash-in-transit vehicles and vaults among others.
Hawks spokeswoman Captain Ndivhuwo Mulamu said the breakthrough followed months of intense investigation.
“Our agents went undercover and bought a substantial number of explosives from the suspects,” she said.
Sowetan has established that the suspects had at one stage allegedly robbed undercover policemen of R20 000 in cash when the cops were trying to buy the explosives during one of their operations around September.
Police officers helped gang evade arrest on the road between Gauteng and FS
Yesterday eight of the men, aged between 28 and 49, who include a mine security guard and a policeman, appeared before Magistrate Adele Maass in the Fochville Magistrate’s Court.
They were charged with unlawfully dealing in explosives.
Six of the eight men were arrested on the N12 near Fochville on the West Rand in possession of explosives on Tuesday, while the other two were nabbed in Fochville later the same day.
The men were not asked to plead and their case was postponed to next week for legal representation and a formal bail hearing.
They were all remanded in police custody.
According to the charge sheet, the men were arrested carrying numerous explosive shock tubes and blasting cartridges.
Maass told the men that they were facing a schedule five offence – meaning in order to be granted bail they would need to prove that it is in the interest of justice.
Police Minister Fikile Mbalula has applauded the arrest of “rotten cops” who “betray our badge”.