/ 29 June 2011

Cwele on the carpet after drug-dealing conviction

Cwele On The Carpet After Drug Dealing Conviction

A disciplinary hearing for convicted drug dealer Sheryl Cwele — wife of State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele — has been scheduled for Wednesday, the Sowetan newspaper reported.

The hearing would determine Cwele’s future as director of health services at the Hibiscus Coast municipality, municipal manager S’bu Mkhize was quoted as saying.

She is currently on suspension with no pay.

Cwele and Nigerian national Frank Nabolisa were sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment each on May 6 by the Pietermaritzburg High Court for drug dealing.

Several days later the council agreed Cwele should not receive an income from June 10, and that a formal disciplinary hearing should take place.

The pair pleaded not guilty to recruiting drug mule Tessa Beetge, who is serving a prison sentence in Brazil, and attempting to procure another woman, Charmaine Moss, to collect drugs in Turkey. Moss turned down the offer because she suspected something was amiss.

Cwele was appealing her conviction, and was out on R100 000 bail. Nabolisa was currently in custody and intended appealing both the sentence and conviction.

Judge Piet Koen said in his judgment that Cwele’s defence — that she was merely helping Nabolisa to recruit “white women to front his company in Johannesburg” — was implausible.

Koen said that it was “highly im­probable” that Cwele would have recruited women with minimal education (in Beetge’s case, grade 10) for short-term work of about two weeks with high remuneration (about R25 000 a time) — to “front companies” and act as “directors”, as Cwele had insisted — without knowing something illegal was happening.

He also questioned why Cwele and Nabolisa would “recruit [Moss] just to deliver a parcel [from Turkey] when courier services operated worldwide at competitive rates”. – Sapa and Staff reporter