‘Top legal minds’ to assist in state capture prosecutions
The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development has allocated more than R100 million to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in a bid to hasten the prosecution of individuals implicated at the commission of inquiry of state capture.
This comes after a call by the NPA for financial resources in its work on state capture.
"The NPA will be allocated R102 million and these funds will go to capacitate the Assets Forfeiture Unit, the Special Commercial Crimes Unit and the Special Investigative Unit. In addition to that, the department has allocated R25 million for seven advocates who will assist the NPA into its investigations and where necessary, with prosecutions," says the department's spokesperson Chrispin Phiri.
Tembeka Ngcukaitobi and Geoff Budlender are among the seven advocates earmarked to assist the NPA .
This comes just days after the United States announced sanctions against the Gupta family and its associate Salim Essa.
"Work you are seeing now has nothing to do with the US sanctions, it's work that has always been in the pipeline," says Phiri.
"It comes at a time, yes, where you are seeing actions by other jurisdictions which are assisting the investigation of the NPA but it's not directly linked to those actions."
The NPA's spokesperson Bulelwa Makeke has also confirmed that the prosecuting body has accepted assistance from the US Department of Justice to train prosecutors and investigators in handling matters of corruption and money-laundering.