THE Hawks have arrested controversial businessman and director of Blackhead Consulting Edwin Sodi during a dramatic swoop by the elite crime fighting unit in Johannesburg.
Sodi appeared before the State Capture Commission on Tuesday in connection with the R255 million Free State asbestos project.
The Hawks also confirmed the arrest of former head of the Free State’s Department of Human Settlements Nthimotse Mokhesi, and former national Human Settlements Director-General Thabane Zulu.
The former mayor of the Mangaung Metro, Olly Mlamleli, is alleged to be among those arrested on Wednesday.
The arrests are part of a joint operation being conducted in Gauteng, Free State and KwaZulu-Natal.
The State Capture commission is currently investigating the R255 million contract awarded by the Free State government for the eradication of asbestos in government houses.
Moketse recently testified before the commission that he received more than R600 000 from Sodi’s company.
Mokhesi told the commission that in hindsight the department did not entirely get value for money on the project.
He also admitted that he could have done more as the head of the department to ensure that background checks on the certification of Blackhead were above board.
He also conceded that Blackhead would have never been appointed if the issue of certification had been placed up front.
Last month, Sodi told the commission that his company did not have the expertise or accreditation to handle hazardous material.
He further confirmed that his firm received contracts of more than R1 billion over a decade and that it paid millions to several ANC officials and Cabinet ministers including Zizi Kodwa, ANC treasurer general Paul Mashatile and Deputy Minister of Communications Pinkie Kekana.
ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule is among people who allegedly scored between R1 million and R10 million each
The contract in question first received criticism from the DA in the Free State.
The party in 2015 unsuccessfully brought an urgent court application against the provincial Human Settlements Department in order to halt any further payments to Blackhead.
It was not known at the time that Blackhead was, in fact, working in a joint venture with Diamond Hill, a company owned Ignatius “Igo” Mpambani, then 37, who was shot dead in broad daylight as he was driving down Sandton’s Bowling Avenue in a Bentley worth about R3m.
Police at the time confirmed that the shooter or shooters did not take any money from the scene despite the fact that Mpambani had drawn cash from a nearby ATM before his death.
According to reports, Mpambani was one of the main beneficiaries of a controversial contract to “audit” and “assess” houses with asbestos roofs in the Free State.
According to documents from the provincial department of human settlements, a joint venture between Gauteng-based engineering consultancy firm Blackhead Consulting and Mpambani’s company, Diamond Hill Trading 71, scored a R255m contract in 2014 for the “audit and assessment of asbestos housing units”.
Further records from the provincial Human Settlements Department show that the department paid the joint venture R230m in ten tranches between the end of 2014 and August 2016.
Blackhead Consulting, owned Sodi, took Diamond Hill to court in connection with a final payment of R77.5m made by the Human Settlements Department to the joint venture in late 2016.
The executor of Mpambani’s estate and FNB, with which the joint venture opened a bank account for the asbestos auditing project, are also cited as respondents.
In his affidavit, Sodi claims that the joint venture agreement between Blackhead Consulting and Diamond Hill stipulated that the two companies were to share the proceeds of the project on an equal basis.
However, instead of dividing the final payment of R77.5m between the two companies, Mpambani allegedly paid the entire amount into his own account, according to the court papers.
In his founding affidavit, Sodi also claims that he tried to convince Mpambani to pay Blackhead the 50% cut of the R77.5m payment from the department of human settlements, but that these efforts were in vain.
“Mpambani did not agree with either of these options but did not provide reasons for this. In response to my querying the whereabouts of the funds he informed me in vague terms that the funds were ‘safe’ and provided no further detail,” according to Sodi’s affidavit.
(COMPILED BY INSIDE POLITICS STAFF)
