• SAPS Crime Intelligence deputy head Major General Firoz Khan abandoned his court bid on Monday to prevent the Madlanga Commission from accessing his seized devices.
  • Commission investigator Tshepo Nyatlo says Khan's extracted messages link him to Malema, the R92-million Covid tender scheme and a man who now faces murder charges.

A senior South African Police Service officer spent weeks in court trying to stop investigators from reading his phone. He accepted defeat on Monday. What he found in it is now public.

Major General Firoz Khan, deputy head of SAPS Crime Intelligence and head of counter-intelligence, filed an urgent court application last month to stop the Madlanga Commission from accessing electronic devices seized during a raid on his Houghton home in May.

On Monday he withdrew every action taken against the commission. That same evening, the commission released the documents.

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The material was obtained from a BitLocker-encrypted hard drive that contained the extraction report submitted to the Commission by SAPS on 1 June 2026.

Commission investigator Tsepo Nyatlo gave the inside story in an affidavit. The WhatsApp messages are between Khan and Mohammed Saeed, co-founder of Carnilinx, a tobacco company that has been widely accused of tax evasion and money laundering.

The messages show Khan passing confidential police information to EFF leader Julius Malema on several occasions. In one exchange, Khan sent Saeed a list of parliamentary questions that the EFF was to put to the Inspector General of Intelligence. The following day, Saeed confirmed to Malema that the questions would be “deleted”. Nyatlo provided screenshots of the exchanges.

Khan also allegedly gave Malema the name and home address of the complainant in the VBS Mutual Bank case.

The extraction report has also implicated Khan in the Covid-19 tender fraud. He allegedly worked with Saeed to manipulate procurement inside SAPS and National Treasury, using two companies, Cyberia and Smada, to facilitate a bribe arrangement on an IT contract. Saeed is alleged to have discussed splitting the fees of approximately R92.4 million three ways. Divisional commissioner of supply chain management Lieutenant General Molefe Fani was suspended in May after the Special Investigation Unit linked him to an irregular contract dating back to his time at National Treasury.

There is also a case of murder. Former SAPS officer Matipandile Sotheni, who left the service in 2019 and was recruited to do security work for Saeed, is currently in custody charged with the murder of Madlanga Commission witness Marius van der Merwe. Khan has been directed to give a sworn statement on his relations with Sotheni and whether he communicated with him directly or through any intermediary.