TWO months before his arrest for allegedly taking part in a huge vehicle fraud syndicate, the branch commander of Rustenberg’s police car-theft unit bought himself a house.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Just an old family dwelling down the road from the police station for him, his wife and four children. How much of it came from the proceeds of alleged criminal activities is still unclear.
It had taken the organised crime unit in Rustenberg over a year to snare Captain JHN Kruger, three other officers and several civilians involved in the syndicate.
The charges involve theft, robbery, fraud, falsification of documents, issuing falsified documents, defeating the ends of justice, corruption and making false declarations.
According to investigating officer Captain Mark Maass of the anti-corruption unit, the men conspired, colluded or worked together to steal vehicles, including luxury four-wheel drives, between 1994 and 1995 in the North West Province and Gauteng areas.
The state’s case further alleges that the accused — including Lance-Sergeants JLC Pieters (24) and CF Pasino (23) and Constable PS Slinda — stamped new numbers on the cars and issued them with clearance certificates. They have all pleaded not guilty.
The vehicles were then allegedly registered under false names and sold. The officers then allegedly shared the proceeds with two civilians.
Maass is no Serpico — the New York police officer, captured on the big screen by Al Pacino, who exposed widespread police corruption in the city’s force during the 1970s.
But Maass had no compunction in going against Kruger, his former boss, when he suspected corruption.
“We received information from an informant that he was driving a Kombi which had been stolen from outside a school in Linden (Johannesburg),” Maass explained.
“But when we approached him Captain Kruger claimed to have bought it from a dealer and insisted he had replaced most of the parts, including the seat, himself.”
Further police inquiries concluded that this was nonsense. Five officers from the unit were interviewed and about 107 cars seized following extensive inquiries.
The trail linked a huge network of civilians right back to the car-theft unit and Jacob Moeng, a 41-year-old car dealer whose bank account was stuffed with over R170 000. He was also standing trial at Rustenberg Circuit Court this week.
Maass, who has been a policeman for 11 years and was part of the car-theft unit until the investigation started, said it was difficult for him to believe what was unfolding before him at the time.
“It was hard because I had known Captain Kruger for four years. He was a good officer. I had learned a lot of good things about policing from him.”
He accepts there is widespread corruption within the SAPS because of the temptation many officers face. “What we need is to change the culture of the service so that people don’t keep quiet when they see colleagues doing something criminal. We must break this cycle of protecting crooked colleagues.”