Top cops wanted access to Booysen’s office

Booysen, who was suspended last month over allegations of fraud, revealed in an answering affidavit submitted to the Durban High Court on Friday that KwaZulu-Natal provincial SA Police Service (SAPS) commissioner Lt-Gen Mmamonnye Ngobeni, newly-appointed head of the Hawks Maj-Gen Berning Ntlemeza, and several other officers tried to gain access to his office.

Booysen, who has gone to court to contest his suspension, also revealed that he was still investigating Ngobeni for corruption and he believes that his suspension is linked to that investigation.

“I am involved in high-level and important investigations of corruption involving inter alia, a senior member of the SAPS, the current provincial commissioner of KwaZulu-Natal [Ngobeni]. I have little doubt that my suspension is connected with this investigation and it is no coincidence that on the day I was suspended the provincial commissioner herself came to my office with the first respondent [Ntlemeza] and a number of other senior police officials demanding access to my office. Fortunately my office was locked and she could not gain access thereto.”

Ntlemeza, in his affidavit submitted earlier this week to the Durban High Court, claimed that Booysen and the men tasked with investigating a police officer’s assassination fraudulently received an award for shooting dead six innocent men.

Ntlemeza goes further to claim that while the award was for tracking down the men who assassinated superintendent Zethembe Chonco in August 2008, the case numbers used to secure the award were for unrelated cases in Howick, of housebreaking and motor vehicle theft.

Booysen was suspended earlier this month for allegedly supplying false case numbers in a bid to obtain the award.

Booysen, however, claims that the document which resulted in him and his men receiving an award for tracking down and killing Chonco’s killers was never drawn up by himself and that he had nothing to do ultimately with granting the award. Booysen claims there was a typing error in the case numbers.

Chonco was the head of the KwaZulu-Natal taxi violence task team and commander of the Kranskop police station. He and other policemen were escorting four taxi violence suspects from Kranskop to the KwaDukuza (Stanger) Magistrate’s Court when they came under attack on August 27, 2008.

Booysen challenged Ntlemeza’s assertion that there was no evidence linking the six men killed by police to Chonco’s death.

“There is information obtained from informers as well as cellphone analysis, to indicate all those killed were suspects in the murder of superintendent Chonco.”

He said Ntlemeza had also ignored the inquest findings into the deaths in which a magistrate had ruled that Chonco’s death had been brought about by the six men.

Booysen also questioned the need to have eight heavily armed men policemen deliver a notice to inform him that there was a departmental investigation into the issue of the case numbers.

“The show of arms was wholly disproportionate to the allegations against me and I can only reasonably conclude that it was done as an act of intimidation.”

Referring to Ntlemeza’s assertion that it was necessary to suspend Booysen because he was a senior officer who could intimidate witnesses and interfere with the investigation, Booysen pointed out that the documentation from the allegations against him had been in the police’s possession since 2012.

Booysen also pointed out that Ntlemeza’s relationship with Ngobeni was much closer than Ntlemeza was willing to admit and the two had met several times during the year.

He also questioned why Ntlemeza thought those who had ultimately approved the award would have given awards for solving housebreaking and motor vehicle theft cases.

“It is obvious that an incentive award is unlikely to be granted for investigations relating to the theft of a single motor vehicle or to a single housebreaking,” said Booysen.

Booysen has been investigating Ngobeni over her links to Durban businessman Thoshan Panday. Booysen was also investigating Panday for fraud in relation to R60 million spent on police accommodation during the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

In a previous court application earlier this year to interdict national police commission Riah Phiyega from dismissing him, Booysen claimed that Ngobeni ordered him to stop investigating Panday and soon afterwards Panday paid for her husband’s birthday party.

Booysen and Ntlemeza’s legal teams will find out next week on Wednesday when the case can be argued in the Durban High Court and before which judge. - ANA

(File photo: Gallo Images)