Criminal justice officials should face financial vetting, probe told

Senior criminal justice officials and their family members should undergo financial vetting, and those who have accumulated wealth unlawfully should be fired and banned from working for the state, World Bank official Laura Pop told the Madlanga commission on Wednesday.

Pop, a World Bank senior financial sector specialist, is an expert on money-laundering.

The commission of inquiry is investigating allegations of criminal infiltration into the country’s law enforcement agencies and its criminal justice system.

Her evidence centres on what the commission could consider before making its recommendations to President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Pop leads anticorruption, anti-money-laundering and asset recovery programmes in Southern Africa, South Asia and Eastern Europe. She also leads research projects on anticorruption issues, in particular financial disclosure systems for public officials.

Drawing from countries which have experienced justice system capture, Pop said some countries took extraordinary measures to reset the justice system.

One that South Africa could consider is a body that assesses financial records of senior officials in compromised institutions and their close persons’ assets, expenditures, and declared income.

“Several countries have come to the conclusion that new extraordinary mechanisms are needed to rebuild trust in institutions and remove compromised individuals quickly and at scale,” Pop said.

In South Africa, the government tends to be criticised for acting slowly against corruption-accused officials.

Amid allegations of corruption before the commission, the police have fired crime intelligence top cop Maj-Gen Feroz Khan ; Maj-Gen Richard Shibiri , the former component head of organised crime; and Brig Rachel Matjeng , linked to corruption accused Vusimusi Matlala.

Many police officers implicated in corruption, including police deputy commissioner Lt-Gen Shadrack Sibiya, are still employed in public service.

Pop said those found to have accumulated wealth unlawfully in the financial analysis could be removed from the criminal justice institution and banned from working for the government.

“A time-limited bar on re-employment in the same institution and in related bodies should attach to removal and to any resignation tendered to avoid the process so that those removed do not resurface in adjacent institutions,” Pop said.

She added that while a government undertakes extraordinary measures to clean up a system, it should consider the legal rights of the officials.