Durban — The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has called for an amendment in the criminal justice system to make it difficult for lawyers to be paid with “dirty money” by hit men.
Speaking at a media briefing convened by the Inter-Ministerial Committee on KwaZulu-Natal political killings on Wednesday in Durban, the provincial senior advocate, Elvis Gcweka, said the State was concerned that alleged hitmen were being represented by top legal minds, saying this raised questions about their source of funds, since their profiles revealed no sources of income to afford such expensive legal services.
He said the State was contemplating introducing amendments to the criminal justice system or introducing new legislation to prevent paymasters funding the legal representation of the hitmen in court.
“We have a concern as the NPA and our director, advocate Shamila Batohi, has raised the issue with us as prosecutors that we must find the enablers of the crimes where hitmen were found to have been involved. We must find a law to fight this trend because it was clear that masterminds behind political killings are often found,” said Gcweka.
He said it was not easy to ask lawyers to reveal who was paying for their client’s legal fees under the current justice system because the State can be accused of interfering or undermining the client and legal firm’s confidentiality.
Gcweka said some lawyers may be accepting "dirty money" in cash as payment for their services, especially in cases involving cash heists.
The Coastal Black Lawyers Association chairperson, advocate Mpumelelo Zikalala, said the State’s concern was misplaced since police had all powers to trace the movement of money in companies, including legal firms.
He blamed police laziness, saying it was part of their investigation when dealing with cases involving hitmen or cash heists to follow the movement of money to check activities of money laundering.
Zikalala said the State was allowed to monitor lawyers’ trust accounts where they were forced to be paid by clients.
He added that the State could at any time go to the Legal Practice Council to request financial records of any lawyer to check who paid for which case.
Furthermore, Zikalala said by law, lawyers were too bound to comply with FICA (the Finance Intelligence Centre Act), which compels anyone to disclose the source of payments of more than R25 000.
“It was wrong to create an impression that lawyers may be involved in money laundering whereas the State has laws to find if we are doing that. It is the State’s duty, not ours as lawyers, to question an accused’s family where they did get money to pay for his legal representation. After I as the lawyer have disclosed to FICA that so and so has paid me R50 000, it must be the State that must go to that person and ask for the source of money,” said Zikalala.
He also dismissed the impression that by representing alleged hitmen and cash heist suspects, they were perpetuating criminality, saying their job was to ensure the State followed the correct legal procedures to convict the accused.
Police Minister Bheki Cele, who was giving updates on progress in combating political killings in the province, also shared the concern of masterminds’ roles in funding legal representation of alleged hitmen. Cele, however, said despite the masterminds’ issue, the task team set up to fight the political killings in the province had done a good job, otherwise the province would be “swimming in blood”.
He reminded the public that when the team was formed there were zero arrests and the team had achieved a lot of convictions. So far the work of the Task Team had resulted in the arrest of 348 suspects, who had already been charged in 233 cases; 62 suspects had been convicted, while 155 were going through court processes and 17 suspects had died during the court processes.
Among the convictions Cele mentioned was that of Nkosingiphile Gumede, who was sentenced to 135 years for the murder of eThekwini ward 88 ANC councillor Sibusiso “Bhabhane” Maphumulo.
Gumede killed Maphumulo in 2018 in uMlazi and was found with a gun in Mandeni that was linked to Maphumulo’s murder. The State said it was also linked to 20 more murders in the province, which proved that Gumede was a hitman.
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