Advocate accuses Paul O’Sullivan of Ipid infiltration

A senior advocate who prosecuted Paul O’Sullivan and his then-assistant Sarah Jane Trent in 2017 on multiple charges such as fraud and extortion, says the two hadinfiltratedthe Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid). Testifying at parliament’s ad-hoc committee on Wednesday, advocate Michael Mashuga alleged that he had evidence showing significant interference by O’Sullivan and Trent, which he said contributed to delays in the case he was investigating. The committee is investigating criminality and corruption in the criminal justice system.

At the time, O’Sullivan, Trent and Ipid officers Mandlakayise Mahlangu and Temane Binang were charged with fraud, intimidation, extortion and contravention of the Ipid Act. They were charged during an investigation into the former actingnational police commissioner, KhomotsoPhahlane, but the matter was later struck off the roll due to multiple delays. Mashuga said at the time that O’Sullivan and Trent had impersonated Ipid officers and obtained statements from witnesses, and that the two Ipid investigators — Mahlangu and Binang — had done nothing to stop them.

During that period, Mashuga said, he was subjected to sustained interference, insults and accusations of being “captured”. He was a senior prosecutor at the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) at the time. “In fact, during that time, there was a sustained attack, which included interviews.

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O’Sullivan went for interviews at different radio stations, Radio 702, Power FM, and different articles were written about me, and ultimately my name even made it into a book by a certain Jacques Pauw, where allegations of state capture and corruption were made against me just because I had made a decision to prosecute Mr Paul O’Sullivan and some other suspects,” he said. Mashuga added that he had more than sufficient evidence on which he relied to prosecute them. READ |Phahlane ‘salutes’ Mkhwanazi for exposing corruption in criminal justice system “There’s always been this question, whether Mr Paul O’ Sullivan and Trent were entitled to involve themselves in this [Phahlane] investigation, and whether Ipid had abdicated its statutory power and duties and functions to a private person,” he said.

He said that during the Ipid investigation into Phahlane, O’Sullivan repeatedly taunted him, sending emails of intimidation, and also would threaten to take Phahlane to prison. He added that the Ipid investigation at that stage was not independent because it was “infiltrated and led by O’Sullivan and Trent, who were not only biased and not independent, but who had a motive to falsely implicate Phahlane”.

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