Top cop told to give up R500m fraud dockets

Since 2011, close to 40 criminal case dockets that were investigated by Captain Lupumlo Lwana were taken away by the Hawks national team.

The cases involved investigations of fraud valued at close to R500-million.

In December 2011, two senior police officers, Brigadier Piet Pieterse and then-head of the Hawks in the province Yvonne Badi, took 15 case dockets involving close to R200-million from Lwana’s offices. The dockets were never returned to Lwana.

In December 2015, a SASSA case involving R49-million was removed from Lwana, only to be returned almost two years later, in September 2017, allegedly with missing information.

In August last year, Major-General Alfred Khana, head of the commercial crime unit in Pretoria, removed more than 20 dockets from Lwana.

Lwana did not deny this but would not be drawn into the details of the dockets.

Some of the dockets taken in the last six years from Lwana involve:

lFraud and forgery at the public works department, worth R152-million;

lA service provider allegedly fraudulently awarded a R11-million tender by the health department;

lA Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality case in which a supplier, awarded a tender to build RDP houses, allegedly claimed more than R5-million before finishing the job;

lA R11.8-million fraud case involving a health department supplier;

lTwo Buffalo City Metro road tenders worth R15-million and R45-million;

lThe R5.9-million Nelson Mandela funeral scandal tender;

lThe Mnquma municipality’s R10-million refuse bag tender;

lThe SASSA R49-million probe; and

lA corruption case within the education department against two suppliers involving R600000.