Cele instructed official to lease space

Suspended police chief Bheki Cele instructed a senior procurement official to lease space in two building in Pretoria and Durban to be used as the police's new headquarters, an inquiry into his conduct heard on Monday.

Lt-Gen Hamilton Hlela said Cele allegedly gave the instruction after Hlela took him to visit a site in Pretoria where the police's headquarters were supposed to be built.

"He informed me of one building in the city where two floors where readily available for leasing," said Hlela, who was also deputy national police commissioner.

"I asked him to give me the number of the contact person, but he said the person will contact me or would come visit me. I did not know who that person was."

Hlela said that in May 2010, he was instructed by Cele to arrange meetings with public works officials to secure the building.

He acknowledged that Cele did not tell him what to say in those meetings.

Hlela, who resigned in August 2010, told the inquiry he had motivated a different strategy of procurement -- a negotiated tender process.

This was not communicated to Cele, he said under cross-examination by Cele's defence attorney Vincent Maleka SC.

Hlela also failed to disclose this during a probe by Public Protector Thuli Madonsela late last year.

She found that Cele's action pertaining to two leases for new police headquarters in Pretoria and Durban, valued at R1.6 billion, was "improper and unlawful".

These findings will form part of the evidence at the inquiry.

Madonsela's report was instrumental in President Jacob Zuma's appointment of the board of inquiry.

Earlier, evidence leader Viwe Notshe, SC vowed to bring evidence proving that Cele was corrupt and had "openly" identified the two buildings --the Middestad building in Pretoria and the Transnet building in Durban -- for the contentious lease contracts.

During his testimony, Hlela said he did not think Cele was corrupt and he had not stated this in his affidavit.

"I would have laid a corruption charge if I felt he was guilty," he said.

Notshe was warned by Maleka against a "general tendency" of promising evidence that failed to prove anything in the end, particularly relating to Cele's alleged contravention of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA).

However, Notshe said he and the other leaders of evidence would prove that while at the helm of the police service, Cele contravened, among others, provisions of the PFMA, the Government Immovable Assets Management Act, and Treasury regulations.

Notshe said Cele had attempted to distance himself from the identification of the two premises during Madonsela's investigations.

"He attempted at all costs to distance himself... The national commissioner sought to shift all the blame to Hlela," said Notshe.

Asked by Maleka whether Cele's instruction to lease a particular building was improper, Hlela said the market had to be tested, and that one could not just point a finger at a building.

Asked why he had not raised that fact with Cele, he said: "I did not because he wanted the building." Before proceedings began on Monday morning, the board's chairman, retired Judge Jack Moloi said the inquiry would not re-investigate what the Public Protector had already investigated.

It would rather seek to establish whether Cele acted corruptly or dishonestly, or with an undeclared conflict of interest in relation to the two police leases.

It would also examine his fitness to hold office and his capacity to efficiently execute his duties, he said.

"The board is also not sitting as a court of law to review the correctness and accuracy of the Public Protector's report," said Moloi.

Cele, who was present at the inquiry on Monday, was suspended with full salary, allowances, privileges and benefits, pending the outcome of the probe.

The previous national police commissioner Jackie Selebi, was jailed for 15-years by the High Court in Johannesburg in 2010 for corruption following a trial which began in 2008.

The inquiry resumes on Tuesday, when Hlela is expected to conclude his testimony.

Another four people are expected to give testimony in the course of the week. Cele is also expected to appear.