The Hawks and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) need professionals that can match the sophistication of these who were committing high-profile commercial crimes and concealing them.
This is the view of a legal analyst who was commenting after the SA Reserve Bank (SARB) attached assets worth more than R1 billion belonging to former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste on the basis that he and others were suspected of contravening foreign exchange regulations.
Jooste is alleged to be the ringleader in a financial fraud scheme that saw investors lose out on more than R200bn and resulted in the collapse of the share price five years ago.
The financial collapse saw thousands of local and foreign investors, ranging from small to major shareholders, including the Government Employees’ Pension Fund, losing their investments.
Legal expert Mpumelelo Zikalala of Zikalala Attorneys said law enforcement agencies needed to get professionals who could solve financial crimes in “a race against time” to prevent the funds from disappearing.
“This type of crime is the crime of the future and the state needs its own resources so that arrests can be made sooner and assets can be seized before criminals have an opportunity to make them disappear,” Zikalala said.
Last year, former NPA Investigating Directorate head Hermione Cronje told Parliament that high-profile commercial crime cases were challenging to crack.
She said law enforcement did not have the professionals to match that level of sophistication and that agencies were sometimes forced to rely on expert witness opinion on the cases to be able to work out where wrongdoing occurred.
Cronje said the biggest challenge was the voluminous data involved in criminal dockets, including contracts, tender documents, and bank and back records.
The ID at that stage had 21 financial investigators, which was not enough, she said.