Staff Reporter.
@GalloImages.
The Pretoria high court on Tuesday postponed the corruption, fraud and theft case against former crime intelligence head Richard Mdluli and two co-accused.
Mdluli and his two co-accused – former Saps supply chain manager Heine Barnard and former chief financial officer of the State Security Agency Solomon Lazarus – face charges of corruption, fraud and theft in connection with allegations of gross abuse of the police’s intelligence slush fund.
The intelligence slush fund consists of funds allocated to Crime Intelligence by Treasury for the specific purpose of preventing crime and gathering intelligence to combat crime.
The matter pertains to charges of gross abuse of the police crime intelligence slush fund, which allegedly benefited 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.
The other allegations, among others, include 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.
The offences are alleged to have been committed between 2008 and 2012.
On Tuesday, the matter against the trio was supposed to resume in the Pretoria High Court, but the case was once again postponed to allow Mdluli to provide an update to the court on the progress of the review application by Saps to fund his legal fees.
The postponement was also to provide Mdluli an opportunity to respond to the pre-trial agenda.
The matter was deferred to 11 October 2022.