How serious is government about fighting organised crime and corruption?
I don't know about government generally, but I can certainly say the [justice] minister and the president are serious about it.
Not serious enough to exempt you from budget cuts?
We've been given some assurances from Treasury that we will be exempted from some cuts.
Are they going to ring-fence your budget?
There's no agreement that it will be ring-fenced.
If they were serious about fighting corruption surely your budget would be ring-fenced?
Absolutely.
How do you feel about government's VIP protection budget being 74% of the NPA's?
It's revolting in a country like ours where law enforcement is desperate for funding. With all the spending priorities of government, we're never going to have enough for the highly skilled capabilities we desperately need.
Is business helping you?
Yes, we have an MOU with Business Leadership SA and they've been supporting us with certain skills we need.
So what's your excuse for cocking up the [former Eskom boss Matshela] Koko case?
This is what happens in complex cases like this. After an arrest there is so much additional information that needs to be properly analysed, and these things take time.
How much longer are we going to wait for a high-profile state capture offender to be convicted?
Once a matter is enrolled, how long it takes is out of the prosecution's hands. It depends on the delaying Stalingrad tactics that come into play. Once the prosecution enrols we can't say how long it will take. But certainly we will be ready, given that we are enrolling cases that are as trial-ready as possible. I hope magistrates and judges would manage the cases so that they can be finalised quickly.
You arrested Koko a year ago, investigations started five years ago, you said it was trial- ready.
Who said we started investigating five years ago?
How long have you been investigating it?
I don't know, but the ID [Investigating Directorate] was only proclaimed in 2019 and the case itself they only started investigating much later. The Zondo commission reports were only two years ago. There was some work before that but it's definitely not five years.
You had truckloads of evidence.
That indicates how complex these matters are. We are between a rock and a hard place. We really want to move fast but we can't be pressurised by the media because when we go to court with cases that are not ready ...
Was it because of media pressure you took Koko to court before you were ready?
No, definitely not, we do not act on media pressure. We were ready, but there was a lot of information that was obtained afterwards.
Given your resource constraints, shouldn't you be dealing with cases more selectively?
That's exactly what we're doing. We have case prioritisation criteria and high-impact cases ...
You don't have the skills to deal even with such carefully selected cases?
No, absolutely. That's a huge problem. That's why we're working with business to help us.
But you still have the Koko disaster?
It's a setback but not a disaster.
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