A former attorney charged with fleecing millions from his clients has questioned the authenticity of a statement of one of his late clients.
Questioning the first investigating officer, Sergeant Thula Maja, Manfred Chinamasa, who was struck off the roll of legal practitioners in November 2023 over the charges, raised that the statement taken by Maja in 2022 was invalid because it was not stamped.
Chinamasa, who is alleged to have misappropriated millions of rand from his road accident victims, was cross-examining Maja in the East London Specialised Commercial Crimes Court on Monday.
He faces charges related to misappropriating money that the Road Accident Fund paid to his trust account for the benefit of the crash victims.
Maja confirmed Khumshile Mandita’s statement did not have a stamp, but said it was not untoward. He said the stamp was not normally affixed at the end of the statement.
Chinamasa, who has been in custody since his arrest in 2024, disagreed with that, while state prosecutor advocate Siphamandla Ngxokolo objected.
Maja said: “It’s not true that statements have to have a police stamp. A pro form [which comes with the statement] of an affidavit has a stamp of the station [at which] the affidavit was taken, not on the statements collected from complainants.”
Maja, now attached to the provincial organised crime unit, said the cases opened against Chinamasa were assigned to him as the investigating officer in 2022, and he investigated up to a point where a warrant for Chinamasa was issued.
He said he took Mandita’s statement. Mandita has since died and his statement was read into the record in January.
Maja said the statement was about his RAF money allegedly being misappropriated by Chinamasa.
He said Mandita mentioned in his statement how much he was supposed to have received. He said the suspect was Chinamasa.
He had been awarded more than R2.6m and only received R1.1m.
Chinamasa said Maja was not telling the truth and tailored his own statement to what Mandita’s statement said.
“The statement is invalid because it doesn’t have a stamp,” Chinamasa said.
But he was stopped in his tracks, with the presiding magistrate saying Chinamasa could pursue that further in arguments.
Chinamasa questioned Maja, saying he was not the investigating officer and that it was the reason he’d had to refresh his memory on the statement concerning money that was paid to Mandita.
But Maja said: “In summary, you are the person who is alleged to have taken Mandita’s money. It’s a lie that I didn’t investigate this matter.
“Yes, my name at the front of the docket had been [scratched] out, but communication between me and former manager tells who is investigating the matter,” Maja said.
He said the current investigating officer took over the case when police were looking at Chinamasa, and Maja said he had already issued a warrant for his arrest.
Daily Dispatch
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