Zille hints at cover-up by top cops
Details about why a case focusing on a former Crime Intelligence cop has become part of a political row may come out in court.
|||Cape Town - Details about why a case focusing on a former Crime Intelligence cop has become part of a political row may soon emerge when the matter goes before the Western Cape High Court.
A former captain, Paul Scheepers, is at the centre of the case for fraud, perjury and violation of the Electronic Communications Act.
Scheepers, who also ran a private detective agency, allegedly provided the numbers of cellphones under investigation by his agency to try to get cellphone providers to release records of calls made and received.
Tomorrow he will try to have a court order that saw equipment and documents seized from his private office during a police raid be returned.
Scheepers’s attorney Steven Barker said the State planned to oppose this action. The matter was likely to be postponed.
Last week the case became part of a spat between provincial government and the police.
Premier Helen Zille questioned whether police leaders wanted policing in the province to fail. She then referred to what appeared to be Scheepers’s case.
“The officer alleges his equipment and documents were unlawfully seized after three of his informers had provided him with sensational information asserting the involvement of high-ranking police officers with corruption, and of links between the drug trade, gangs and politics in the Western Cape…
“Much of the sensational evidence (affidavits of informers) will probably be led in camera because of the secrecy laws governing police intelligence. But if the validity of the informers’ allegations can be established, it will answer many questions,” she said.
But police and ANC sources had told Weekend Argus that the case would instead reveal that a Crime Intelligence officer had been working for Zille.
They said this was not lawful because as a government employee, the officer would not have been allowed to provide services for Zille.
Weekend Argus
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