Madlanga Commission: SA ranked in top 5% globally for organised crime

The Madlanga Commission heard expert evidence that South Africa is among the countries with the highest rates of organised crime.

The director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, Mark Shaw, shared the statistic on the stand

His testimony came as the commission probes alleged cartel activities, as well as role players who allegedly infiltrated the criminal justice system.

"There's much to say about Colombia as it compares to us. Mexico, Paraguay, Ecuador, so four Latin American countries, the Democratic Republic of Congo, then ourselves, then Nigeria, Lebanon, Turkey, Kenya, etc. What this effectively means is that South Africa is in the top 5% of all countries in the world in respect of criminal markets and actors as measured by the index," Shaw said.

Shaw is also set to present recommendations for the commission to combat criminal syndicates.

He's been referring to how other countries have tackled so-called mafias.

“In the context of Italy. Before 1991, prosecutors investigating the mafia in different places were not linked up. Essentially, what the Italian state established was an ability to maintain the independence of prosecutors investigating the mafia while creating centralized systems of information to avoid fragmentation, and also to monitor whether cases were being stopped because of infiltration.”

Shaw also noted that South Africa requires additional legislation to deal with unexplained wealth of public officials.

“There's no law that provides for the civil forfeiture or confiscation of property owned or controlled by a public official where its value is disproportionate to the lawful income disclosed by that official, and a kind of mandatory vetting or integrity program—what we discussed earlier—and there's also no statutory provision that establishes a substantive criminal offense for unexplained wealth more generally.”

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