Wheels of justice are turning, says Public Prosecutor Batohi
WHILE National Director of Public Prosecutions Shamila Batohi said although she thought that in regard to state capture cases her office would have been “further down the line”, she was proud of what the NPA had achieved over the past few years since the new leadership had taken over.
In the past five years, almost 700 government officials had been convicted of corruption, and while some of the more complex cases, such as the Steinhoff matter and state capturerelated prosecutions took a long time to reach prosecution stage, the wheels of justice were turning, she said.
Batohi yesterday held a roundtable discussion along with her deputies and other counterparts, with the media regarding her office’s work. “We can confidently say that impunity is no longer a given; it doesn’t mean that you will go to jail, but you can expect a knock on the door if you have engaged in corruption or related crimes.”
She said state capture corruption was neither a one-person nor a oneday job. “In complex corruption cases, guilty pleas are hard to come by, especially in adversarial systems like ours, with extensive constitutional protections that, sadly, are often abused by the accused who are trying to perfect the art of delaying justice – even while calling for their days in court.”
In the past five years, her office had established partnerships with law enforcement agencies to deal with the Zondo Commission’s recommendations. It had also established the Integrated Task Force to deal with the the commission’s recommendations.
In addition, about 3 500 prosecutors dealt with over 600 000 criminal prosecutions countrywide yearly.
She said while South Africa tracked well against international trends, “we must always remember that we will not prosecute ourselves out of this corruption crisis we are in – we need a whole of society response.”
The Investigating Directorate had declared 103 investigations, and enrolled 37 cases involving 208 accused persons as of the end of January this year. She highlighted some of the key high-profile cases, such as the corruption case of former speaker of Parliament Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.
Batohi said the NPA was criticised for giving her “five-star treatment”, but she said with many white collar crimes, accused were allowed to report to a police station along with their lawyer, as had happened in this case.
Regarding former Eskom boss Matshela Koko, whose multimillion-rand corruption case was last year struck from the roll due to unreasonable delays, Batohi said the NPA had been heavily criticised for its silence but was remaining mum due to a potential conflict of interest.
Head of the Investigating Directorate, Andrea Johnson, said they had not “failed” in the Koko matter.
They believed they had a strong case against Koko and they would enrol the matter again.
On the Steinhoff matter, the NPA said it had a “crack team” who would be prosecuting and although it had taken long to get to court, more accused could be expected to be added.
The extradition of the Guptas from the United Arab Emirates was also high on their agenda, although the application was currently in limbo.
In highlighting further achievements over the past few years since she has headed the prosecuting authority, Batohi said the Specialised Commercial Crime Unit achieved 329 convictions in serious and complex commercial crime cases. This resulted in an extremely high conviction rate of 88.7% for the 2023/24 year.
A total of 388 persons and companies had been convicted of corruption in the past year, 147 of them government officials. The unit has enrolled four cases related to 16 of the recommendations in the Zondo Commission report which included the “asbestos” matter wherein 13 people and four entities were prosecuted.
Batohi said a number of other matters were in advanced stages of investigation and would be ready for enrolment in the next couple of months. In dealing with corruption prosecutions and asset recovery, she said the Asset Forfeiture Unit had secured and preserved more than R14 billion of state capture assets.
Around R6.12bn had been confiscated or forfeited to date, and R6.26bn (inclusive of the landmark ABB case) had been recovered in total.
Addressing sexual offence matters, she said, partnering with the police, they had cleared a backlog of 46 045 DNA reports since October 2020 to expedite the prosecution of sexual offence cases, in particular focusing on serial rapists identified through this project.
Regarding TRC matters, she said 15 dedicated TRC prosecutors guided investigations and oversaw 159 matters which had been identified for investigation. Thus far, 24 matters had been finalised, with a decision.
TRC investigators from the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations (the Hawks) were currently investigating 137 matters.
Batohi said the NPA was well on its way to being a solid organisation that could face current challenges. But, she said, while the NPA was a non-political actor, it navigated a hugely complex political environment with “additional storm clouds on the horizon”.