Panday, Madhoe off the hook
THE prosecutions authority in KwaZulu-Natal has poured cold water over a media report that Durban tycoon Thoshan Panday could face trial on bribery and corruption charges.
Advocate Moipone Noko, the head of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions in KZN, told POST that her decision, taken in October, not to prosecute Panday and Colonel Navin Madhoe of the SAPS supply chain management section, stood.
Agendas
She said she had decided against prosecuting Panday and Madhoe because the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) was not going to be used to settle the scores and agendas of others, a situation that would jeopardise reasonable prospects of securing a conviction.
This means that this is the end of the Hawks’ claim that Panday inflated the prices for accommodation for police officers during the 2010 World Cup.
Neither Panday nor Madhoe were charged following the allegation, which Panday and Madhoe had denied.
The news that Panday is off the hook appears to put to rest a recent report in the Citizen which claimed that Pretoriabased state advocate Gerrie Nel was apparently probing Panday concerning both the World Cup allegation and that of paying Hawks boss General Johan Booysen R2 million as a bribe.
Booysen claimed Panday had given Madhoe the money in a briefcase to hand over to him (Booysen) in the parking lot of police headquarters in Durban.
The bribery charge was provisionally withdrawn by the Durban Magistrate’s Court three years ago.
Unhappy
Noko said senior state advocate Tumestis Abram Letsholo of the Durban Commercial Crime Unit had decided in March last year against prosecuting Panday and Madhoe for the exact reasons she had declined to prosecute.
Letsholo told POST he was not happy with the manner in which Hawks and Crime Intelligence had conducted themselves in their investigations.
“I am not prepared to subject the judicial process to moral defilement.
“Panday was called for a meeting at police headquarters in September 2011.
“General Deena Moodley, General Johan Booysen, Colonel Brian Padaychee, a Colonel Jessie and Warrant Officer Shamlan Moodley played a(n) illegally obtained tape recording to Panday and his lawyer.
“The recordings concerned conversations Panday had with the provincial police commissioner, General Mmamonnye Ngobeni, his lawyer and others.
“The obtaining of the conversations is unacceptable,” he said.
“The strategies adopted by the defence (are) privileged.”
Panday said he hoped that the false information circulating about him would end.
“The Hawks and Crime Intelligence did not have a shred of evidence against me,” he said.
“The illegal methods which they employed caused them to trip.”.