Phahlane lied to Parliament - McBride
15 December 2017
Cape Town – Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) head Robert McBride has rubbished claims that the police watchdog did not inform the acting national police commissioner about the investigation against him.
Briefing Parliament's police committee on Wednesday, McBride said IPID had documents detailing fraud, corruption and defeating the ends of justice on the part of Lieutenant General Khomotso Phahlane.
This was in relation to the IPID investigation into how his R8m house and his fleet of cars were financed.
Phahlane has appeared a number of times in front of Parliament and defended himself against the allegations, calling the case against him a witch-hunt.
But IPID on Wednesday told the committee the investigation was started because something did not "add up".
And Phahlane knew about it as early as June 2016, McBride told the committee.
"General Phahlane denied here in front of the House and in public that he was aware of the investigation. This is false. We have documentary proof that not only was he informed about it, but his own signature is in the document asking his PA to schedule a meeting regarding the case and that's as early as June 2016."
It just was not true that he didn't know about the case, McBride said.
"Unfortunately for Phahlane, we have recordings of every interview."
IPID chief of investigations Matthews Sesoko told the committee that the watchdog was not saying that Phahlane was guilty.
"That's not our role. Our role is to investigate and present evidence. What we are saying is that what we have, based on investigations relating to the vehicles, the house, it just doesn't add up and therefore it requires us to investigate that."
Once the investigation was complete, the results would be presented to the relevant authority to decide whether or not to proceed, he said.
"We are saying what we have so far suggests there is some wrongdoing that at least needs an investigation," he said.
A confident McBride was grilled on whether he had any political support in IPID, and whether he had informed Minister Nathi Nhleko and President Jacob Zuma about the situation involving Phahlane.
McBride told the committee that it was difficult to envisage that the minister would take their recommendations seriously.
"At the moment when we send our recommendations to him, they get sent back from the minister. But we will continue to do the right thing, and try and brief the minister on a range of issues."
McBride told the committee that there was also a pattern of whistleblowers and witnesses being threatened and victimised.
Last year, Nhleko asked Parliament to institute a disciplinary process against McBride but that failed.
Paul O'Sullivan charges won't stand up in court - McBride
Cape Town – Private investigator Paul O’Sullivan has never pretended to be an Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) official. And his arrest was a serious act of intimidation, IPID head Robert McBride told the police committee in Parliament on Wednesday.
McBride was briefing the committee on some of their high profile cases, including their case against acting national police commissioner General Khomotso Phahlane.
O’Sullivan was arrested on Monday outside AfriForum’s offices in Pretoria, and taken to the Kameeldrift police station, where he was charged with offences including fraud, intimidation and extortion.
He was released late on Monday night.
IPID on Wednesday was questioned on O’Sullivan’s role within the unit, and the events leading up to his arrest.
The unit clarified that O’Sullivan was merely a complainant in the case, who had knowledge of the offences and had raised them while McBride and his team had been on suspension.
McBride told the committee that the case against O’Sullivan would not go anywhere.
"There isn’t a snowball in hell’s chance that those claims of false impersonation of IPID officials will ever stand up in court. That simply did not happen. The issue here is Phahlane’s corrupt relationship, not who assisted us on the investigation," he said.
Chief of investigations Matthews Sesoko said O’Sullivan was not contracted to IPID, either as a service provider or an investigator.
"We get information from him, we follow up and more often than not, [that] information checks out and you cannot ignore that," he said.
They validated any information that came from witnesses and whistleblowers, IPID said, and that was the same with information coming from O’Sullivan.
"Why, if they needed O’Sullivan to go to court, didn’t they summon him specifically? Why didn’t they take a statement from IPID or the IPID investigator about what happened at the interviews?" McBride asked the committee.
He questioned the motives behind the arrest of O’Sullivan and his assistant Sarah Jane Trent.
This article first appeared on News24, see here.
