Top cop loses court bid for reinstatement
The High Court in Pretoria has thrown out suspended crime intelligence boss Lieutenant-General Peter Jacobs’ urgent bid for reinstatement.
Late last year, National SA Police Service (Saps) Commissioner Khehla Sitole suspended Jacobs and five of his fellow officers over alleged abuses of the Secret Service Account.
They, in response, turned to the court, where they argued due process had not been followed and that Sitole had, in fact, not been in a position to take the action he had.
But Acting Judge Jacques Minnaar – who presided over the case – yesterday found the national commissioner was not only entitled to do as he had, he was obliged to.
Jacobs and his fellow officers have been accused of using the Secret Service Account – intended for funding covert operations – for personal protective equipment purchases.
They, however, deny the allegations and claim they are being targeted in response to their own efforts to fight broader corruption within the division.
“The sole purpose of our suspensions is because of the checks and balances that we, as a team, have put in place to stop misuse and mismanagement of the Secret Services Account,” Jacobs had said in the court papers.
He had argued their suspensions should be set aside because, according to the Intelligence Services Oversight Act, the police minister should have been furnished with a report from the office of the inspector-general of intelligence (OIGI) beforehand.
Minnaar, however, found while the Act created an “oversight mechanism where the OIGI can receive complaints and reports on matters, investigate them and submit findings to the minister”, it did not regulate Jacobs and his fellow officers’ suspensions.
“It does not provide that, in the absence of the OIGI submitting a report to the minister, and in the absence of a decision by the minister which is communicated to the national commissioner, the national commissioner will have no powers of suspension,” he said.
Minnaar dismissed the application with costs.