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Mpuma corruption trial resumes
23/01/2008 16:49 - (SA)
Walter Ka Nkosi and Justin Arenstein
Nelspruit - Mpumalanga's former director general Advocate Stanley Soko is expected tp appear in court on Thursday when the province's largest corruption trial resumes.
Soko and axed Mpumalanga Economic Empowerment Corporation (MEEC) chief executive Ernest Khosa are scheduled to appear in Nelspruit's Regional Court for allegedly forcing government contractors to meet them in shady car parks and dark streets to pay massive cash bribes.
Both men were fired from their jobs when the scandal broke, and have been charged with corruption, fraud, and contravention of both the Public Service Management Act and the Organised Crime Act.
They have pleaded not guilty, and are out on bail of R20 000 and R50 000 respectively.
Testimony heard in court so far indicates that Soko forced executives from fledgling PR company Rainbow Kwanda Communications to secretly hand over R700 000 at a string of meetings in Pretoria after threatening to have them arrested for corruption if they did not "show gratitude and help me out".
Rainbow Kwanda director Kedibone Mashamaite is scheduled to resume testifying on Thursday about how Soko and other highly placed officials extorted "hush money" in return for a lucrative R30m Mpumalanga government public relations contract.
Mashamaite will clarify why he was paid R3.6m before he had done any work - and will seek to explain how he made a series of bribe payments into "front" accounts or to intermediaries acting for to Soko, Khosa, and corrupt National Prosecution Authority deputy director Cornwell Tshavhungwa.
Mashamaite claims Tshavhungwa conspired with Soko and Khosa to milk his company of millions of rands by threatening to arrest him for tender fraud.
"When I heard that Tshavhungwa now wanted another R3m to keep quiet, I finally said no," Mashamaite told the court last year.
Tshavhungwa has since been jailed for a web of other abuses linked to the MEEC, while Khosa is being prosecuted on 45 additional fraud charges in a second case relating to his alleged abuses of taxpayer resources at the MEEC.
The web of cases, which date back to 2004, are still making national political waves with Tshavhungwa's former boss, Gauteng Scorpions head Gerrie Nel, arrested earlier this year for defeating the ends of justice for allegedly failing to act against Tshavhungwa.
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