A veteran South African detective on Monday told how his bid to have Vito Palazzolo charged with corruption was turned down by the Western Cape’s director of prosecutions.
“I thought I had a case,” Leonard Knipe, who was national head of serious and violent crime before he retired from the police, testified at the Palazzolo hearings in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court.
He described how former national police commissioner George Fivaz gave him a brief to probe alleged criminal activities by director Andre Lincoln, head of the presidential investigation task unit, which was supposed to be investigating Palazzolo.
Lincoln was eventually convicted on 15 counts of fraud, one of which involved a trip he made to Namibia with Palazzolo, for which he claimed expenses from the police even though Palazzolo actually paid.
Knipe said on Monday he told Frank Kahn, then the head of prosecutions in the Western Cape, he believed the circumstances of the trip “made out a case of corruption against both Lincoln and Palazzolo”.
“That was discussed at length with advocate Kahn, and advocate Kahn showed me the errors of my ways, and that I did not have a case in law,” he said.
Asked by Italian prosecutor Gaetano Paci what kind of “errors” these were, Knipe said: “The learned advocate said that I did not have a case in law, and as a disciplined policeman I did not question the decision of a prosecutor.”
Under further questioning, Knipe repeated: “I thought we could make out a case of corruption against both of them.”
The hearing, which is gathering evidence for use in Palazzolo’s trial in absentia in Italy on Mafia charges, continues. — Sapa
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