Top cops block Ipid

WRANGLE: COURT ORDER PREVENTS SERVING OF SUBPOENAS ON THEM

Directorate wants documents for tender fraud probe, but top brass cite exposure of intelligence secrets.

National Police Commissioner General Khehla Sitole and two of his top officials have obtained an urgent court order to stop the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) from executing subpoenas forcing them to provide information in a tender fraud investigation.

Acting Judge John HollandMuter granted the order this week prohibiting Ipid director Robert McBride from executing subpoenas against Sitole, deputy national commissioner for crime detection Lieutenant-General Jacob Tsumane, deputy national commissioner management advisory Services Ntombenhle Vuma and Bongani Mbindwane, a former police ministry advisor.

The order was granted pending the determination of an application to set aside the subpoenas, which must be instituted before July 17.

Ipid initially asked the four to appear before an investigator to establish facts relating to a December 2017 meeting at a Pretoria hotel. Ipid obtained the subpoenas in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court last month after it insisted it could not answer questions from anyone other than the joint standing committee on intelligence. The four obtained legal advice despite assurances they were not suspects at this stage.

The subpoenas required them to declassify and hand over a range of documents to Ipid but in court papers, Vuma said the subpoenas concerned sensitive information relating to state security and intelligence and the potential danger of releasing the information was “just too dire to contemplate”.

She insisted any attempt to comply with the subpoenas would infringe the law and disclose sensitive information with the potential to compromise national security and expose intelligence-gathering mechanisms and sources.

Disclosing the information would expose the identities of operatives and confidential sources, reveal information about intelligence methods and application, impair intelligence systems and activities and potentially endanger the lives of those involved in gathering and assessing the information.

It would also impair relations between South Africa and a foreign government, she added. –

The danger of releasing the information was just too dire to contemplate.

Ntombenhle Vuma Deputy national commissioner management advisory services

Picture: AFP Peter Besenyei of Hungary, third left, leading Petr Kopfstein of the Czech Republic, Michael Goulian of the United States, Matt Hall of Australia and Ben Murphy of Great Britain over Budapest before the fourth stage of the Red Bull Air Race World...