KZN police probe ‘questionable’ Scharnick plea deal, wiping of criminal record
KwaZulu-Natal detectives are compiling dossiers for the National
Prosecuting Authority and the Madlanga Commission on what they say is a
"questionable plea agreement" involving an associate of the suspended
Deputy National Police Commissioner.
Crime Intelligence boss, Dumisani Khumalo, alleged at the Madlanga Commission recently that James Scharnick was one of Shadrack Sibiya's bodyguards.
He went on to describe him as a hijacker with 18 convictions.
Scharnick, who is from Richards Bay, has since laid charges of fraud and defeating the ends of justice against Khumalo, accusing him of perjury.
He insists he has only been convicted in one case.
At a press briefing on Thursday, police said an inspection found that 18 cases against Scharnick, including charges of carjacking and hijacking, had been merged into a single plea deal.
Anthony Gopaul, the Acting Deputy Provincial Commissioner for Crime and Detention, said this resulted in a five-year suspended sentence and a R150,000 fine.
“We are referring this to the NPA to review what scope, role, or mandate was undertaken by the prosecutor. Did he have that delegation to do that? Was it approved?
“We will also send a separate dossier to the magisterial judicial commission for them to undertake an exercise to determine whether the magistrate was provided with all the relevant information when he accepted this plea from the accused.
“So that is a part we will leave for the judicial system.”
The NPA in KZN confirmed that it had been working with the police regarding Scharnick's dockets and handed them over to the Director of Public Prosecutions for investigation.
Gopaul said they also discovered that a SAPS employee accessed the police system and wiped Scharnick's criminal record.
“This person is with the criminal record centre. The criminal record centre we will know is an office that is in the national component. We are not privy to the extent of what is going to happen to that employee, the processes that will unfold within that particular division of the employee.”
Gopaul says they're not sure if this was done deliberately or by mistake.
He was asked who falls under the Local Criminal Record Centre, which he confirmed would be Sibiya.
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