While claiming to be a victim, Lieutenant-Colonel Deenadayalan Govender, who is attached to the Serious Organised Crime Unit of the Hawks and is also the head of its KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Tracing Team, has faced difficulties explaining large sums of money that flowed into his bank account.
Govender received no less than R3 million between 2022 and now under rather questionable circumstances. He appeared before the Madlanga Commission on Monday, where his bank transactions were presented, including an amount of R300,000 that he said took him more than an hour to deposit at an ATM, prompting further questions from the commission.
DG: She gave us the cash, and we deposited the money.
MM: So you are saying my question still applies. You stood in front of the ATM and made 37 transactions, one after the other, totalling 37 transactions. You were standing there?
DG: Yes, Commissioner.
MM: One transaction after the other?
DG: Commissioner, it depends. It could take about an hour.
MM: What time was this? What time of day?
DG: It could have been after hours, Commissioner.
This was the exchange between Commission Chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga and the senior police officer, after Madlanga expressed difficulty accepting Govender’s explanation for why he spent more than an hour depositing cash into his own account at an ATM.
Govender said the cash had been given to him by his mother-in-law.
“Why could you not wait and do it all at once inside a bank? What was the rush? I tell you now, I would not do this. I would not stand at an ATM and do 37 transactions at an ATM. Why could you not wait until you could do one transaction inside a bank? Why did you not do that?” Madlanga asked.
“Being inconvenient, it’s unsafe to have R300,000 in cash and to keep depositing R10,000 at a time over a period of more than an hour, according to you,” Madlanga said.
“Commissioner, as soon as she gave it to us, we put it in the ATM, Commissioner,” Govender responded.
“No, but you could have gone to a branch and deposited the entire amount in a single transaction,” Madlanga said.
“I could have, Commissioner,” Govender replied.
“It just does not make sense. So, the explanation you’ve given to the Chair and the Commission just does not make sense. And it raises questions, which are the questions Advocate Chaskelson raised with you. It smells of a money-laundering exercise,” Madlanga said.