Ekurhuleni metro police boss Robert McBride is at the centre of 18 police investigations resulting from the arrest of alleged cash-in-transit heist kingpin Marco Singh in December 2006.
The Mail & Guardian has established that McBride is under investigation by the South African Police Service (SAPS) for allegedly torturing Singh, using Singh’s luxury BMW X5 vehicle after its owner had been arrested, altering official police registers about the incident and tampering with firearms.
The SAPS is also investigating allegations that McBride, or people instructed by him, smuggled weapons across the Oshoek border post to Swaziland. McBride this week denied all the allegations against him. ”Yes, there was a time during the armed struggle when I was involved in smuggling arms, but it’s bullshit that I am involved in it now,” he told the M&G.
The charges McBride faces with regard to Singh are the same faced by three Ekurhuleni metro police officers who are witnesses against the police chief in a drunk-driving case.
The three officers, Stanley Sagathevan, Patrick Johnson and Itumeleng Koko, are currently facing disciplinary hearings involving thousands of charges of alleged criminal behaviour and misconduct.
The men are believed to have once been close allies of McBride’s before falling out with the police boss after his alleged drunken car crash in 2006. Johnson and Koko have since resigned from the metro police department and are two of the state’s main witnesses in its drunk-driving case against McBride. That case is scheduled to resume in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Monday.
It was confirmed this week by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) that the 18 McBride dockets formed part of the court records stolen from the Johannesburg High Court during a professional hit late last Sunday evening.
Twelve armed men in police uniforms overpowered the court’s security guards before stealing the laptop computer of state advocate Deon van Wyk and documentation relating to at least three police investigations.
These are the cases involving McBride, a massive 2006 cash robbery at First National Bank’s Selby depot in Johannesburg where at least R46-million was stolen, and the docket against alleged illegal diamond dealer Shanavas Khan.
The intruders also escaped with a safe full of documents from the office of the court’s chief registrar. Chief Johannesburg prosecutor Charin de Beer confirmed this week that the hit was essentially a failure, because they have copies or originals of all the stolen documents.
Other charges
In a press statement issued on Wednesday, De Beer confirmed the other criminal investigations against McBride. ”I wish to emphasise that these cases are still in the investigation phase and the details thereof cannot be divulged at this stage. Some of the cases being investigated relate to charges of attempted murder, fraud and defeating the ends of justice.”
De Beer refused to elaborate on the charges, but the M&G has confirmed that it essentially involves the arrest of Singh by the Ekurhuleni metro police on December 4 2006.
Singh is regarded as one of the country’s heist kingpins and mainly operates from Johannesburg’s East Rand. He has been convicted four times for crimes including attempted murder, assault and culpable homicide, but has never been jailed.
Singh’s arrest by the metro police happened in Pretoria, but the investigation was allegedly moved to Ekurhuleni. This is one of the offences McBride and his former colleagues are being investigated for.
The M&G reported last year that the conduct of metro police members during the Singh arrest was the subject of a criminal investigation registered at the Silverton police station under case number 77/12/2006.
The charge sheets against Sagathevan, Johnson and Koko in their disciplinary hearing allege that they severely tortured Singh.
”You — did cause a civilian, Marco Singh, to be unlawfully arrested, detained, held in captivity in one of the rooms in the EMPD [metro police] office, and violently assaulted him to such an extent that the said Marco Singh had defecated, urinated [and] spewed all over the floor of the said room and came to near death—” the charge sheet reads.
It is now clear that the SAPS is not only looking into the alleged actions of McBride’s accusers, but also those of the police chief himself.
Although McBride admits that he was involved in handing over Singh to the SAPS, he denies any wrongdoing by him during the Singh arrest. He says his cooperation with the SAPS against his three former friends is why they turned against him.
Sagathevan, Johnson and Koko told McBride they would change their affidavits about his car crash if he handed their firearms to the SAPS for ballistic testing. Shortly after McBride handed the weapons to the investigating officer of the Singh arrest, the three men allegedly told the SAPS that McBride was drunk and that they assisted him covering up the accident.
”I handed Singh over to an official from the national police office. A few days later he [Singh] was out on bail,” McBride says. The M&G has been unable to establish whether Singh is still the subject of a SAPS investigation.
McBride was surprised by the NPA’s confirmation of 18 dockets against him and says the SAPS told Ekurhuleni mayor Duma Nkosi a while ago that there were no outstanding charges against the police chief, except for the drunk-driving trial.
”I can confirm without an iota of doubt that, if there was any wrongdoing in the Marco Singh case, it had nothing to do with me. This is just to hype things up before my trial resumes [on Monday].
”If there was anything against me, they would’ve charged me with that.”
Decoy or for real?
What were they really looking for? That is the question on the lips of rattled staff after the Johannesburg High Court was attacked by a gang of 12 organised robbers last Sunday night.
Documents — including those concerning a R46-million robbery from First National Bank (FNB) in 2006 — and a laptop were stolen from state advocate Deon van Wyk’s 12th-floor office. A safe was taken from the registrar’s office.
Coincidentally, at the same time of the court attack, five or six armed men unsuccessfully tried to break into the Roodepoort home of the investigating officer in the FNB robbery case, inspector Gary Pretorius.
But there are even more oddities: blue dots were found on the office doors of chief prosecutor Charin de Beer and two of her deputies. Deputy Judge President Phineas Mojapelo’s door also had a blue mark on it.
According to a source at the court, nothing was reported stolen from these offices and it looks as though the robbers ”selectively” went through Van Wyk’s files. ”What were they really looking for and what were the decoys?” asked the source.
In an additional twist, the investigating officer looking into the burglary was replaced after two days.