The names of ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule and Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi have been dragged into a high-profile R5 million bribery and murder investigation currently playing out in the Bloemfontein High Court, in the Free State.
Eight men – among them a Bloemfontein businessman, police officers, a soldier and a lawyer – are facing a raft of charges, including murder, conspiracy to murder and defeating the ends of justice, for the death of businessman Louis Siemens in May last year.
On the eve of the trial, which started on Monday and is set down to continue until the end of November, a letter classified as “top secret” and authored by provincial counter-intelligence – a unit of the police’s crime intelligence division – revealed the extent of the probe into high-level corruption in the province.
The confidential letter, which City Press has seen, cites “the former provincial premier and a serving national minister” as being persons of interest in the investigation into Siemens’ assassination.
Law enforcement sources have told City Press that the former premier and minister cited in the letter are Magashule and Motsoaledi.
Both their names also appear in affidavits deposed to by accused parties and witnesses as part of the probe into the R5 million bribery scandal, which led to the hit on Siemens.
In an affidavit signed in September, the provincial health department’s former legal services director, Justice Finger, claimed he had been told by a friend that Magashule had been paid R5 million to facilitate the approval of a licence for CityMed Day Hospital – of which Siemens was chief executive officer and shareholder.
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