- Senior investigator Mantsha Raphesu told the Madlanga Commission that Paul O’Sullivan emailed Brigadier Dineo Mokwele in January 2025, giving her 14 days to resign or face exposure.
- O’Sullivan copied then-IDAC head Andrea Johnson, a senior police general and the police minister on the email.
A senior investigator at the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, Mantsha Raphesu, has told the Madlanga Commission that private forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan sent Brigadier Dineo Mokwele an ultimatum email months before the official case against her began, copying the very officials who would go on to lead her investigation.
Raphesu testified that on 5 January 2025, O’Sullivan, who runs a charity called Forensics for Justice, emailed Mokwele demanding she comply with three conditions within 14 days: hand over all documentation relating to her appointment, including who facilitated it; resign from the police immediately and return any payments she received as a result of what he called her “unlawful appointment”; and confirm in writing that she had resigned.
“Should you fail and/or refuse to comply with our demands, we shall take the necessary action to have you removed as soon as possible, in the public interest,” the email read, according to Raphesu’s testimony.
O’Sullivan told Mokwele to “be wise, go back to BMW,” a reference to her previous employer, and accused her of having “unlawfully and intentionally engaged in a corrupt practice.”
The email was copied to then-IDAC head Andrea Johnson, General Sibiya and Police Minister Senzo Mchunu. In it, O’Sullivan described his own track record, claiming Forensics for Justice had been responsible for exposing and removing two national police commissioners and at least twenty generals or brigadiers from office.
O’Sullivan has no official government or law enforcement authority. He has previously testified before the Madlanga Commission himself and is currently facing a R10 million counterclaim from KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi over separate comments made during the same inquiry.
The revelation adds to growing questions at the commission over how the case against Mokwele, and the broader investigation into Crime Intelligence head Dumisani Khumalo that followed it, actually began, and whether it was shaped by pressure from outside official channels rather than IDAC’s own independent process.
Pictured above: Paul O’Sullivan.
Image source: Supplied
