With 827 arrests and 217 convictions secured between July and September, the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation’s (DPCI/Hawks) quest to make serious inroads in the fight against crime continues to gain momentum.
This was on Tuesday revealed by National Hawks Head Lieutenant General Godfrey Lebeya during a media briefing outlining the Directorate’s successes in the second quarter of the 2022/23 financial year.
During the briefing the Lt General highlighted 50 cases, which represented 5% of the Hawks successes during the three months.
With 524 arrests, the Serious Organised Crime Investigation component accounted for the majority of arrests. The Serious Commercial Crime Investigation component followed with 206 arrests, while the Serious Corruption Investigation unit secured 97 arrests.
Fraud cases, which are investigated by the Hawks Serious Commercial Crime Investigation team, recorded the highest number of arrests over all other commodities. In this regard, 222 arrests were secured across the country.
Serious commercial crime was followed by precious metals and diamonds (illegal mining activities) with 126 arrests.
The non-ferrous metal cases followed with 97 arrests and this involved copper theft, and theft of railway line and other essential infrastructure that aids economic activities in the country.
The majority of convictions stemmed from serious organised crime with a total of 128 suspects convicted and sentenced. This was followed by the serious commercial crime component 74 convictions.
A total of 15 suspects were convicted and sentenced for corruption during the period under review.
The Lt General said corruption continued to surface as one of the “biggest threats posed by criminals” to the country.
“It facilitates illicit financial funds which triggered our response to focus on money laundering charges initiated through criminal investigations.
“Corruption cases are a special breed, in that they are committed in secret by consenting parties, which requires a lot of digging to unearth such cases,” he said.
Although the number of arrests from the Serious Corruption Investigation component are the lowest, he said it was in line with the number of cases and resources assigned to deal with the phenomenon.
A number of other corruption cases also appear in the figures of the Serious Commercial Crime Investigation unit.
“We have made some strides on that front and some of the cases that required high-level, meticulous investigation carried out by our team of investigators in rooting out these corrupt elements are mentioned here,” said Lebeya.
Source: South African Government News Agency