Testifying in-camera under the pseudonym ‘Frank’, he told the commission on Thursday, 20 May 2021, that he would get instructions from Dlomo to withdraw money meant for the ministry, under David Mahlobo at the time, with an understanding that it would be distributed for different operations under the CDSO.
Projects Lock, Mayibuye and Justice would see Frank withdraw millions in cash from the SSA on a monthly basis, and deliver it to two ministry officials who could not be named. He noted the importance of making the distinction that the money was not received by Mahlobo as previous evidence suggested, but delivered to two individuals in his office, one of whom was an operative. Frank could not, however, guarantee that Mahlobo would not handle the money himself. Mahlobo denied before the commission that he received cash from members of the SSA.
For Project Lock, Frank said, there was initially a monthly allocation of R200,000 for the benefit of former apartheid assassin Eugene de Kock – who was taken into the care of the SSA and placed in a safe house following his parole in 2015. He did not name De Kock, but evidence leader Advocate Paul Pretorius associated Lock with him while reading from de-classified SSA documents during Mahlobo’s testimony. The amount was later lowered to R30,000 per month, said Frank.
The other transactions had to do with Mayibuye, for which Frank would allocate R2.5-million per month, and Justice, which initially cost R1.3-million before increasing to R1.8-million. The same ministry officials would receive the money from Frank.
Mayibuye was understood to be in respect of money being forwarded to former president Jacob Zuma, but Frank said he had not first-hand knowledge of this.
He described Project Justice as being aimed at a set of judges who worked on high-profile cases that the SSA sought to influence.
Frank appealed to commission chairperson Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo to consider that many SSA employees sought to fix what went wrong with the agency, to preserve its important position in the state.
This article was originally published on Corruption Watch.
Corruption Watch (CW) is a non-profit organisation launched in January 2012, and operates as an independent civil society organisation with no political or business alignment. CW is an accredited Transparency International chapter that fights against the abuse of public funds, relying on the public to report corruption. These reports are an important source of information to fight corruption and hold leaders accountable for their actions.
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