By Palesa Matlala
- Major General Feroz Khan, deputy head of SAPS Crime Intelligence, dropped his court bid on Monday to stop the Madlanga Commission accessing his seized devices.
- Commission investigator Tshepo Nyatlo says Khan’s extracted messages link him to Malema, a R92-million Covid tender scheme and a man now facing a murder charge.
A senior South African Police Service officer spent weeks in court trying to stop investigators from reading his phone. He gave up on Monday. What they found on it is now public.
Major General Feroz Khan, deputy head of SAPS Crime Intelligence and head of counter-intelligence, filed an urgent court application last month to block the Madlanga Commission from accessing electronic devices seized during a raid on his Houghton home in May.
On Monday he withdrew every action against the commission. On the same evening, the commission released the documents.
The contents were obtained from a bitlock-encrypted hard drive containing extraction reports handed to the commission by SAPS on 1 June 2026.
Commission investigator Tshepo Nyatlo laid out what was inside in an affidavit. The WhatsApp messages are between Khan and Mohamed Sayed, co-founder of Carnilinx, a tobacco company widely accused of tax evasion and money laundering.
The messages show Khan passing confidential police information to EFF leader Julius Malema on multiple occasions. In one exchange, Khan sent Sayed a list of parliamentary questions intended for the EFF to put to the Inspector-General of Intelligence. The following day, Sayed forwarded confirmation from Malema that the questions would be “fired off”. Nyatlo provided screenshots of the exchanges.
Khan also allegedly supplied Malema with the name and home address of the complainant in the VBS Mutual Bank matter.
The extraction report also implicates Khan in Covid-19 tender fraud. He allegedly worked with Sayed to manipulate procurement inside SAPS and the National Treasury, using two companies, Cyberia and Smada, to facilitate a kickback arrangement on an IT contract. Sayed is alleged to have discussed splitting a fee of about R92.4-million three ways. Lieutenant General Molefe Fani, the divisional commissioner for supply chain management, was suspended in May after the Special Investigating Unit linked him to an irregular contract from his time at National Treasury.
There is also a murder thread. Matipandile Sotheni, a former SAPS officer who left the service in 2019 and was recruited to work security for Sayed, is currently in custody facing charges of murdering Madlanga Commission witness Marius van der Merwe. Khan has been directed to provide a sworn statement on his relationship with Sotheni and whether he communicated with him directly or through an intermediary.
Khan is due to appear before the commission on 1 July. He will have the opportunity to respond to all the allegations put to him.
Madlanga Commission spokesperson Jeremy Michaels confirmed the date.
Pictured above: Major General Feroz Khan is due to testify before the Madlanga Commission on 1 July.
Image source:File
