By Johnathan Paoli
Former Hawks head Lieutenant-General Godfrey Lebeya has denied having a personal relationship with controversial businessman and alleged organised crime figure Panganathan “Timmy” Marimuthu, saying that he deliberately kept his distance from him despite occasionally sending police officers to obtain information Marimuthu claimed to possess.
Resuming his testimony before the Madlanga Commission on Tuesday, Lebeya was responding to allegations raised during testimony by KwaZulu-Natal Hawks tracing team head Lieutenant-Colonel Deenadayalan “Deena” Govender, who told the commission that senior police officers had been instructed to visit Marimuthu because he allegedly had information relevant to criminal investigations.
Evidence leader Advocate Lee Segeels-Ncube said the commission wanted to give Lebeya an opportunity to address the allegation, particularly given the serious allegations surrounding Marimuthu, including claims linking him to organised crime and human trafficking.
“I do not have a specific relationship with Mr. Timmy Marimuthu. The name Marimuthu came to my attention on the 30th of December 2010,” Lebeya said.
He said this was while he was investigating irregular appointments in the SAPS Crime Intelligence division.
According to Lebeya, several names were linked to appointments that had initially been stopped, but which later went ahead.
Among those connected to the matter was Marimuthu’s wife.
He said Marimuthu would occasionally telephone him, particularly when Lebeya travelled to KwaZulu-Natal, and would indicate that he had information he wanted to provide.
However, Lebeya insisted he never met Marimuthu personally.
“Most of the time when I went to KwaZulu-Natal, I would get a call indicating that he would like to meet me. I have never met him. I sent the officers to go and meet him to get whatever information he wanted to provide. I have never met him or wanted to meet him. I really needed that distance,” Lebeya said.
Pressed on whether the information obtained from Marimuthu had related to a kidnapping investigation, Lebeya confirmed that it had.
The officers had relayed information back to him, although he said he could not say whether the eventual recovery of the kidnapping victim was solely the result of Marimuthu’s information.
“I cannot say that the finding of that victim was solely based on his information, because the investigation teams have got other methods of trying to identify the location where the victim was kept,” Lebeya said.
Lebeya also denied knowing, during his tenure as head of the Hawks, that Marimuthu was being investigated as a possible organised crime figure.
“I was overseeing more than 20,000 matters, and we normally prioritise 100. That one of Marimuthu was not flagged, and I was not aware [of it],” he said.
He did, however, admit that the limited number of organised crime projects in the country suggested that law enforcement may have been failing adequately to identify criminal networks.
“There were only 72 organised crime projects in the country. It doesn’t reflect the number of possible organised criminal groupings operating in the country. So it would appear that we were somehow failing to identify organised criminal groupings in the country,” he said.
Lebeya’s evidence follows testimony by Govender, who admitted knowing Marimuthu and said his children were close to Marimuthu’s grandchildren.
Govender told the commission on Monday that he had, on occasion, taken senior police officers to Marimuthu’s home because Marimuthu claimed to have information about criminal activities and ongoing investigations.
The allegations surrounding Marimuthu have also featured in testimony by MP Fadiel Adams, who accused KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi of allegedly protecting the controversial businessman.
Adams told the commission that Mkhwanazi should explain whether he was “the conduit” for Marimuthu, whom he described as a “known criminal”, and referred to allegations that the provincial police commissioner had interfered in efforts to arrest him, without providing evidence of such.
Marimuthu has for decades been associated with controversy involving law enforcement and Crime Intelligence.
According to findings referenced by the Jali Commission of Inquiry in 2001, he was convicted in connection with dealing in 3,390 Mandrax tablets and sentenced to an effective three years’ imprisonment.
He later became embroiled in controversy surrounding the alleged irregular recruitment of himself and several family members into Crime Intelligence.
In 2024, Marimuthu was identified as a person of interest in a Hawks investigation into alleged human trafficking after several women were rescued from a Durban North property in 2022.
The commission continues.
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