IPID members enter complex to search acting police commissioner’s home

Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) members in five vehicles have made their way into an upmarket security housing complex in Pretoria to raid the home of acting national police commissioner Lieutenant-General Khomotso Phahlane.

Earlier‚ police in marked and unmarked cars descended on the housing estate. Sources with knowledge of the raid‚ said that the marked vehicles were from the Kameeldrift police station rural safety section.

“There are other vehicles here with policemen inside. Several of them have been taking photographs of IPID officers as they arrived. They attempted to block the IPID investigators from entering the property.

“At the moment the situation is quite tense‚ although no one has got violent yet‚” said the source.

Phahlane’s home was raided hours after IPID investigators obtained a court-ordered search warrant after they took a warning statement from him early this morning.

The raid is being carried out in connection with allegations of corruption and defeating the ends of justice‚ which Phahlane is being investigated for.

The allegations stem from Phahlane allegedly receiving kickbacks while he headed the police’s forensic science laboratory.

IPID spokesman‚ Moses Dlamini‚ declined to comment “as it is an ongoing investigation“.

Sources have told The Times that IPID investigators were searching Phahlane’s home looking for an R80‚000 sound system which had allegedly been installed in his home by a service provider who apparently received a contract with the police forensic science laboratory.

“These are the allegations which police management have been attempting to rubbish for months. Phahlane held a press conference late last year to rubbish the claims which were first made by the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union.”