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Zandile Gumede’s corruption affair has been postponed.
- Zandile Gumede’s corruption affair has been postponed until December 10 pending the completion of a forensic report.
- The report, according to prosecutors, will contain hundreds of thousands of pages of information.
- Some of the information collected was obtained from investigations during search and seizure operations last year.
The state, led by Chief Prosecutor Ashika Lucken, took a toll on MPL Zandile Gumede’s hopes that his corruption case would be dropped on Thursday.
Gumede, through his attorney Jay Naidoo in July, said they would request a provisional withdrawal of the case if the state’s case, which has been plagued with postponements since May 2019, was not sufficiently prepared.
Lucken and investigating officers, however, came to the party and said that a critical forensic audit report for the case was nearing completion and would be ready by Dec. 10, Gumede’s next appearance.
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He explained to Judge Dawn Somaroo that source documents had been submitted in the audit trail related to the R430 million DSW case.
He said invoices, delivery notes, orders, scale vouchers and contracts ran to 6,500 pages.
Lucken said the bank statements and financial records, which purportedly represent the cash flow from these DSW tenders, came to about 460,000 pages. He added that the bank documents contained 6 million lines of data.
It said the search and seizure documents totaled 5,250 pages. The devices seized during the search and seizure contained a whopping 250 gigabytes of data.
“Search and seizure document analysis with electronic documents analyzed and captured in more than 1.8 million lines of data. Relationship mapping and background searching comprise 24,000 pages of data, 450 individuals interviewed,” he said.
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Lucken said most of the information had been gathered.
“Overall, the presentation is that most of the information necessary for the forensic auditor to bring the report to a complete state is in the hands of investigators. Some information is still being received and there are positive responses to bank inquiries.”
He said the investigations were in the final stretch.
“There have been several interactions with heads of entities that still had to deliver certain documents to the state, statements that had to be taken from witnesses, these interactions have been continuous and much of this information has arrived.”
Lucken added that once the report is finalized in December, it will not take more than six to eight weeks to draft a final indictment.
However, Naidoo made a provision for any further delays and said that if the state determined that the report would not be completed by December 10, it should be informed.
Judge Somaroo agreed and ruled that if the report was incomplete, an investigation would be conducted as to why there has been a delay in the investigations. He added that defense attorneys could request that the matter be removed from the court’s list.
