A former Warrant Officer from Mpumalanga has been fined R15,000 or face a three-year prison sentence after he was found guilty of tampering with evidence. Samuel Bassie Mahlangu, now a pensioner, appeared before the Delmas Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday, facing charges of defeating the ends of justice and evidence tampering.
The case began when Mahlangu, 61, was served with a summons by the Hawks on May 14, 2024, after an investigation was launched by the Middelburg-based serious corruption unit. The inquiry stemmed from an operation conducted by the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation and the National Crime Intelligence (NCI) on illegal mining in August 2023. During the operation, authorities seized gold-bearing materials, which were booked as evidence at the Delmas police station.
Mahlangu, who was responsible for signing in the exhibit, later admitted to disposing of the seized materials. He claimed that he wasn’t aware the items were critical evidence for an ongoing case. Instead of properly securing the items, he showed investigators where he had thrown them into a garbage bin at the back of the police station.
The former officer’s actions violated standard procedure, as he failed to record the disposal of the exhibits in the occurrence book, further compounding the severity of his crime. As a result, Mahlangu was sentenced to three years in prison, with the option to pay a fine of R15,000. Additionally, one year or R5,000 of the sentence was suspended for five years, contingent on Mahlangu not being found guilty of similar offenses during this period.
