Three people were arrested in connection with child pornography in KwaZulu-Natal on Friday when provincial government offices and houses of suspected employees were raided, police said.
Police spokesperson Superintendent Vishnu Naidoo confirmed that a man was arrested in Ladysmith on Friday afternoon while two other ”very senior” officials were arrested in Nqutu and Umdloti.
The spokesperson for the KZN transport ministry, Mawande Jubasi, said that one of the men was an employee of the transport department.
He said the MEC for Safety, Security and Transport, Bheki Cele, initiated an investigation after they became suspicious that ”some of the officials in our department were using our computers and our network to view illegal material”.
According to Naidoo 13 teams swooped on two houses and 11 offices in different parts of the province after ”long and intensive investigations and consultations with the office of the Directorate for Public Prosecutions”.
Naidoo said the men faced possible charges of possession and distribution of child pornography and would appear in the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court on Monday.
He said the teams had seized at least 11 computers from the raided offices and had also taken a duvet from one of the houses which was suspected to be part of a pornographic image identified on one of the computers.
Several compact discs and videos were seized.
Naidoo said the planning of the operation started some three months ago ”when information surfaced that certain government employees were distributing material of child pornography within their internal e-mail system”.
Naidoo said Friday’s operation was a joint effort involving the KwaZulu-Natal family violence, child protection and sexual offences unit, Pretoria technical support service specialising in computer crimes and the province’s criminal record centres.
He warned that it was only the first phase of the investigation and that the teams would continue to work throughout the weekend.
Naidoo said all the computers, discs and videos seized would be analysed and depending on the findings, more arrests could be expected. – Sapa