“Cocaine Exhibit Stolen from Police Safe… Was the Crime Scene STAGED?” | Shocking Testimony Revealed

[00:00:00]at Potgieter, appointed in September 2021 from Gauteng province.

[00:00:06]>> [snorts] >> We had a brief meeting and I left the office.

[00:00:10]I mention this because I have been informed that General Sitole took issue that the fact that Lieutenant Colonel Prinsloo did not mention this meeting during the his testimony at the commission.

[00:00:24]I'm not sure why Lieutenant Colonel Prinsloo would not have mentioned this meeting or why not mentioning the meeting is something of concern.

[00:00:35]>> Please reread that. I don't think you read what's on there.

[00:00:41]I'm not sure.

[00:00:47]>> I'm not sure why Lieutenant Colonel Prinsloo would have to mention this meeting or why not mentioning the meeting is something of concern.

[00:01:01]>> Continue.

[00:01:03]>> It was not a significant meeting and I can only assume that General Sitole is suggesting that there is some connection of to the theft given that the meeting occurred a few days before the theft.

[00:01:22]I must say >> Sorry for that. Can I just understand this? When you say I have been informed that General Sitole took issue with the fact that Colonel Prinsloo did not mention this meeting. Who informed you of this?

[00:01:36]>> I was informed by the evidence leaders of the commission.

[00:01:41]I myself did not know, but luckily when they asked me it was on my diary.

[00:01:47]I gave them a a copy of my diary to say yes, I was there.

[00:01:52]>> So just to be clear, this is not a discussion you had with General Sitole.

[00:01:57]>> No, it wasn't a discussion we had with General Senona.

[00:02:01]Uh and I still do not know how he found out about it because I never told him about my visit to Krejcir. Thank you.

[00:02:09]>> But the only thing I could say that if >> [snorts] >> he was not told by Prince Thwala Thwala and he was told by Colonel Mchali.

[00:02:16]But also when you visit the office, there's a a a register that you sign.

[00:02:25]>> Uh seeing that General Senona has this concern and even suspects that uh this may have something to do with the theft, do you want to tell us what the meeting the brief meeting was about?

[00:02:42]>> Thank you, Commissioners.

[00:02:44]When I went there, Krejcir had a problem with CIT robberies, cash-in-transit robberies.

[00:02:52]And Colonel Mchali was the new NPC team leader.

[00:02:58]I wanted to talk to them because our I I came from Harry Gwala and Harry Gwala is one of their policing areas. I wanted him and Colonel Prince Thwala because they were having There's a meeting that we have which is called CIT meeting, cash-in-transit meeting. We invite the stakeholders and we talk to them.

[00:03:22]We they they also assist us in speeding up cash-in-transit robbery cases.

[00:03:30]>> [snorts] >> So, I wanted them to start engaging the district commissioners.

[00:03:37]One at Harry Gwala, which is the area of Krejcir, DPC, and one at Ugu.

[00:03:44]So that they can sit and find solution to the problem because the vehicles were attacked coming from Kokstad on that road to Potchefstroom.

[00:03:58]In especially in the afternoon.

[00:04:01]And that happened and it really decreased decreased the number of CIT in Potchefstroom for a while.

[00:04:11]And also we discussed about the manpower.

[00:04:15]It's also in my diary.

[00:04:18]But I said human resources.

[00:04:20]Because when I was there we had a staff of about 40 including the the support services.

[00:04:33]But then when in 2021 they were less than 20.

[00:04:40]And course was I mean course is Lieutenant Colonel Prinsloo.

[00:04:43]I call him by first name because we worked with him.

[00:04:47]I met him when he was a warrant officer in 2004. [snorts] So he >> [cough] >> he expressed concern about the personnel that they don't have members.

[00:05:02]And I said I will look into that if there are posts available, but they must also try and recruit members around Potchefstroom to apply into the TPCIR because you cannot just take a person and bring him in.

[00:05:17]That was the meeting about.

[00:05:26]As I said Commissioner Lieutenant Colonel Mchunu must have informed General Sitole of the meeting.

[00:05:34]>> [snorts] >> On the morning of the 8th November 2021 I received a call from Lieutenant Colonel Prinsloo who informed me that the Potchefstroom TPCIR office has been broken into and entry gained through Warrant Officer P PJP Nars office.

[00:05:56]He said that suspected cocaine exhibit had been stolen and the safe door had been cut by what looked to be a grinder to gain entry to the safe room.

[00:06:12]I told Lieutenant Colonel Prince to to secure the scene, called the local police and LSRC to attend to the crime scene.

[00:06:23]I [snorts] called Colonel Jacob and informed him of the theft and I told him to proceed to Potchefstroom since it was his stolen exhibit as the investigating officer of the initial seizure on the 2022 June 2021.

[00:06:43]If I recall Commissioner where >> [clears throat] >> Bangase was the first investigator and then Jacob also took over immediately in July.

[00:06:55]So, he was the one that he was investigating the matter.

[00:07:00]Thereafter, I went to General Snow Nars office to inform him about the theft and he called the national head, Lieutenant General Lebeya, the provincial commissioner, Lieutenant General Mkhwanazi and the provincial head of crime intelligence, Major General Cheek, and informed them of the theft. General Snow Nars instructed me to attend to the scene with him.

[00:07:25]On our arrival at the scene at the crime scene, I contacted Brigadier Sibiya, the district detective commander, to inform him of the theft since the theft occurred in his district and he also came to the crime scene.

[00:07:44]I also called the district commissioner Major General Mangale to the crime scene because the crime happened in her district. She's a female as well.

[00:07:59]On the way to the crime scene, I also contacted the provincial crime scene management team as their mandate is to attend to serious and complex crime scenes.

[00:08:12]Given this was a theft of suspect suspected cocaine exhibit from the police custody I considered it to be a serious crime warranting their attendance.

[00:08:28]This team arrived at the same time as General Nonna and me.

[00:08:35]Lieutenant Colonel Prinsloo briefed us at the scene and I noticed that Captain Van Wyk from the local criminal records center was also in the on the crime scene.

[00:08:48]Captain Van Wyk did a walk-through with the provincial crime scene management team who took over the crime scene and Captain Van Wyk left.

[00:08:58]I also activated the provincial tracking team but they never arrived. I was informed that they went to town in an attempt to obtain information relating to the theft.

[00:09:11]I must state that when I observed the scene, I was shocked that the safe had been breached but more than that, I was skeptical that the safe had been breached by grind the by the grinding the door.

[00:09:27]I would have expected the DPCI investigators to have investigated the possibility that the scene was staged and obtained an expert opinion on whether the cuts the cuts out of the depth we observed could have indeed resulted in the safe being breached.

[00:09:45]To date, I'm not aware of any such report being obtained by the investigators.

[00:09:51]>> What was your skepticism based on?

[00:09:57]>> I did not get you, commissioner.

[00:09:59]>> You were saying that you were skeptical that the safe had been breached by grinding the door. So, I'm saying or rather I'm asking, what was your skepticism based on? Why were you skeptical?

[00:10:14]>> Earlier on, commissioner, I said that I had a the the owner of the the landlord told us that this safe could never be breached without a key.

[00:10:29]So, that caused my skepticism.

[00:10:34]>> All right, then.

[00:10:36]What is your suspicion? Because now you leave us guessing. I don't think you've quite answered chair's question.

[00:10:43]Uh be because you are saying uh you are skeptical that it could have been breached this way. So, you you might still be coming to it later. I don't know, but what is your suspicion?

[00:10:58]Because you say also here that you believe that it was staged.

[00:11:04]>> I suspected it to be staged because I was under the impression that those strongroom can never be accessed without a key.

[00:11:20]The