The head of the Hawks in KwaZulu-Natal suspects that the theft of 541kg of cocaine with an estimated street value of R200m from a Hawks storage facility was an inside job, saying he suspects they were “sold out” by an insider. Maj-Gen Lesetja Senona was being questioned on Thursday at the Madlanga commission about his reason to store the drugs at a Port Shepstone storeroom, which is about 100km away from where they were discovered in Isipingo, before they were stolen in November 2021. He responded that the people who made the discovery told him the only storeroom with sufficient space was in Port Shepstone.
He told the commission that he went there and when he saw the safe he agreed to store the drugs there. “It needed special skill and a special tool because a normal grinder will never cut that safe, but they broke the safe with drugs. I believe that someone might have sold us out from within, might have given them the layout,” he said.
Evidence leader Adv Adila Hassim revealed that a month before the drugs were stored there, a break-in had happened and that a serious concern of safety had been raised about that storeroom. Senona said he only knew about the safety concern after the drugs were stolen and conceded that he did not do the safety and security checks prior to the drugs being stored. He also revealed that he is still going through a disciplinary hearing as a results of the missing drugs.
Read Full Article on The Sowetan
[paywall]
It’s sub judice,” he said. Testifying before the parliamentary ad hoc committee investigating allegations of corruption and criminality within the police, KZN top cop Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi last year said the drugs ended up in the hands of some entertainers and were circulated at nightclubs in Gauteng. It was allegedly being sold at a cut-rate price, which attracted the attention of the original owners, known as the Big Five cartel.
“The murders of these DJs are drug-related,” he said. “The picture you’re going to see when the matters get to court is that this one thought he is clever by stealing this one’s drugs, and he started selling them, and this one then killed him,” he said at the time.
[/paywall]
