Former Crime intelligence boss Richard Mdluli and others’ assets in excess of R13 million restrained

3 August 2022

The High Court of South Africa, Gauteng Division, Pretoria, has granted the NPA’s Asset Forfeiture Unit a restraint order of over R13 million against the former South African Police Service (SAPS) Crime Intelligence Head, Richard Mdluli, Head of supply chain management Heine Barnard and former SAPS Crime Intelligence CFO, Solomon Lazarus and others. The three of them were custodians and in control of the Crime Intelligence’s secret service account, which consists of funds allocated to Crime Intelligence by National Treasury for the specific purpose of preventing crime and gathering intelligence to combat crime.

The restraint granted on 01 June 2022 was served on the parties yesterday. The other parties in the matter are Mdluli’s former and current wives, Theresa (Lyons) and Vusiwane Mdluli, John and Heena Appalsami (of Daez Trading CC, acting as letting agent), Heine Barnard’s wife, Juanita Barnard and Solomon Lazarus' wife, Sandra Lazarus.

The restraint is premised on the fraud, theft, and corruption case reinstated by the state on 26 August, 2020. The matter pertains to charges of gross abuse of the police crime intelligence slush fund, which ultimately benefited Richard Mdluli and his family. They include payment of private trips to China and Singapore; private use of a witness protection house in Boksburg and conversion of this property for his personal use; the leasing out of Mdluli’s private townhouse at Gordon Villas in Gordons Bay as a safe house to the state and using the monthly rental to pay his bond; paying his financing costs owing on his private BMW through an intricate scheme to the detriment of the SAPS; coercing a SAPS supplier into giving Mdluli a special deal on the use and purchase price of a Honda Ballade; paying transfer costs to an attorney on the purchase of a house in Brackenfell, Cape Town and having family members, without adequate qualifications or experience, appointed in crime intelligence, getting them on the payroll and paying their salaries, providing them with motor vehicles and cell phones. The offences are alleged to have been committed between 2008 and 2012.

The Head of the Asset Forfeiture Unit Adv Ouma Rabaji-Rasethaba welcomed the restraint. “The NPA has a 2-pronged strategy for prosecuting those responsible for looting state coffers, through criminal prosecution and also by taking away the proceeds of crime through asset forfeiture proceedings. We will not allow those who benefited from crime to hold onto the ill-gotten gains and they must feel that crime does not pay,” she said.

The criminal matter returns to court on 05 November 2022.

Issued by Sindisiwe Seboka, Investigating Directorate, 3 August 2022