Trial date set for Richard Mdluli corruption case

A trial date has been set in the corruption case against former SAPS Crime Intelligence Services head, Richard Mdluli.

Mdluli is due to appear in the dock in the Pretoria High Court on October 7, with co-accused, former SAPS head of supply chain management Heine Barnard, and former SAPS Crime Intelligence chief financial officer, Solomon Lazarus.

According to National Prosecuting Authority Investigating Directorate spokesperson Henry Mamothame, the court ordered that the ‘trial will commence on the set date regardless of the pending outcome on an application by Mdluli compelling the SAPS to pay for his legal fees’.

“Mdluli, together with…Barnard and…Lazarus, are facing charges of corruption, fraud and theft relating to the police’s secret slush fund from the time they were employed by the SAPS in the Crime Intelligence Services, between 2008 and 2012,” he says.

The three face a raft of charges, including:

• 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 Gordon’s Bay as a safe house to the state and using the monthly rental to pay his bond.
• Payment of Mdluli’s 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 Cape Town.
• Having family members, without adequate qualifications or experience, appointed in crime intelligence as well as getting them on the payroll and paying their salaries, providing them with motor vehicles and cell phones. – SAnews.gov.za