Thoshan Panday, accused of securing R47m worth of 2010 Fifa Football World Cup police tenders by bribing senior officers, has been charged with fraud, corruption and forgery.
Panday — a former business associate of former president Jacob Zuma’s son, Edward Zuma — and three police co-accused, including former KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Mmamonye Ngobeni, were charged on Friday in the Durban regional court, after an investigation that spanned more than a decade and was allegedly the subject of multiple corrupt attempts to shut it down.
Ngobeni stands accused of unlawfully attempting to kill a Hawks investigation into the apparent irregularities in the exorbitant police accommodation tenders given to Panday’s Goldcoast Trading company.
Just weeks after Ngobeni repeatedly ordered that the investigation be closed, Panday is alleged to have paid for a R20,000 surprise birthday party for Ngobeni’s husband. She now stands accused of corruption and defeating the ends of justice.
Earlier in 2020, the Zondo commission heard evidence that the SA Police Service paid Panday approximately R47m between November 2009 and August 2010 for temporary accommodation for police during the World Cup.
The National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA's) investigative directorate (ID) alleges that Panday and former SA Police Service procurement officials Col Nevin Madhoe and Capt Aswin Narainpershad created a series of sham procurement processes that ensured Panday’s various business entities were awarded police tenders, often at hugely inflated prices.
Panday allegedly paid for flights to Cape Town and accommodation for Madhoe and his family and bought the police officer a R60,000 Toyota Corolla.
The state further claims Panday paid R43,500 in college tuition fees for Narainpershad’s son, for whom he also bought a R7,000 treadmill.
Panday is further alleged to have paid R10,000 in hotel bookings for Narainpershad.
It is the state’s case that Panday, Narainpershad and Madhoe sought to avoid detection of their unlawful conduct by submitting multiple invoices from Panday’s companies to the police, valued at under R200,000 every time. Madhoe was authorised to approve invoices for under R200,000.
This fraudulent scheme allegedly also involved the use of “fake quotes” from non-existent businesses to create the false impression that Panday’s various companies were being awarded police tenders in a fair and competitive process. But, on the evidence gathered by the state, Panday’s Goldcoast Trading company secured a R30m tender for police accommodation during the World Cup when its prices were markedly more expensive: R975 per officer versus the R400 offered by the preferred service provider previously identified by the police.
The state further alleges that Panday, Madhoe and Narainpershad engaged in “corrupt acts” to prevent their fraud from being investigated and to obstruct and defeat the administration of justice. Those corrupt acts included Panday’s alleged attempt to bribe then KwaZulu-Natal Hawks boss Johan Booysen.
Panday was arrested in 2011 after a sting operation implicated him and Madhoe in an attempt to bribe Booysen with R1.42m in cash, allegedly in a bid to make the World Cup fraud and corruption investigation go away.
The entire attempted bribery incident was caught on camera.
The ID launched the long-awaited prosecution after Pietermaritzburg high court judge Trevor Gorven dismissed Panday’s application to review the January 2018 decision by then NPA head Shaun Abrahams to pursue multiple criminal cases against him, in September.
That ruling has again raised serious questions about the fitness to hold office of former NPA KwaZulu-Natal head Moipone Noko, whose decision to withdraw all charges against Panday has been criticised by Gorven as completely irrational.
Noko remains in a senior position in the NPA, despite a raft of serious allegations and findings against her.
“Ms Noko here stated that she had decided not to prosecute ‘as there was no evidence to prosecute any person with any offence’,” Gorven stated.
“This simply ignores a 400-page report by forensic accountants and a ‘trove’ of documents which allegedly provide evidence of the involvement of Mr Panday in the offences,” the judge ruled.
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