VUYO MKIZE
A FORMER Soweto chief prosecutor and a police constable used their influence in the legal system to conjure up fabricated charges against a bakery owner at the behest of a business rival.
These were the State’s allegations against retired prosecutor Andre “Lampies” Lamprecht and Lenasia constable Moses Matsau when they appeared at the Protea Magistrate’s Court on Friday on 11 charges, including racketeering and corruption.
The arrest of Lamprecht and Matsau brought to 14 the number of people held in the case relating to several allegedly false cases opened against the business rivals of a man who ran a bakery.
National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesman Mthunzi Mhaga told The Star the two men were surrendered to the police by their legal representative on Friday morning, as the pair knew they were wanted by the police over these charges.
“One businessman (Sean Tuna) accused another (Sergio Gonsalves), who operated a bakery. Some of his employees later decided to break away from the company and to open their own bakery business.
“However, they had signed a restraint clause with Tuna that they wouldn’t operate within the same radius as his business. Tuna went to the (Johannesburg) High Court to stop the new business from operating, but lost.
“He decided to eliminate his new rival, Sergio, by using his influence to manipulate the legal system. Tuna knows everyone, from the police to prosecutors… he knows the whole system,” Mhaga said.
False criminal cases were opened against Gonsalves, evidence was fabricated, then set up in court, and he would be denied bail when there clearly was no concrete evidence against him, Mhaga said.
Lamprecht, 61, and co-accused Matsau, 36, stood with crestfallen faces as their lawyer applied for them to be granted bail.
State prosecutor Patrick Nkuna told the court that Lamprecht had assisted in efforts to pressure people connected to Gonsalves to falsely implicate Gonsalves in crimes he had not been involved in.
Mhaga confirmed this, saying three people had been convicted and served their sentences.
According to the State, Matsau had been the investigating officer in a robbery case opened in Lenasia.
“He pressured and arrested people under promises of certain benefits and monetary rewards in exchange for implicating Sergio (Gonsalves) as the person who (had) ordered the robberies.
“When the matters were brought to the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) of South Gauteng, that’s when investigations followed,” Nkuna said.
Tuna, police officers Edward Cock and Johan Smit, Tuna employees Ashfaq Mashi, Naveet Mashi and Vusi Masina, senior prosecutor Adriaan Lamprecht, attorneys Renier Spies and Fatima Kolia, court orderly Modise Mathibe, police officer Takalani Samson and Tuna business associate Ayub Mohammed are the other accused in what has been called “the bread case”.
They face 40 charges, including corruption, racketeering, extortion, defeating the ends of justice, and conspiracy to commit perjury, committed between January 2009 and last December.
Lamprecht was granted R5 000 bail while Matsau – who has a pending case of stock theft against him in the Free State – will have his official bail application next Monday. Lamprecht will join his co-accused when the case returns to court on November 11.
Mhaga said it was disturbing that three people had been convicted and served sentences based on fabricated evidence.