Investigations into how police officers channelled firearms to gangsters have been fringed with claims of internal police skulduggery.

Police officers have been arrested, investigators transferred, and lawyers involved in related cases murdered.

The two police officers who headed those investigations, Jeremy Vearey, who was dismissed from the police in May this year, and his colleague Peter Jacobs, said they were transferred from their positions in June 2016 while unravelling how police officers were involved in gun smuggling networks.

This, they previously argued, stunted their work.

Now it has emerged that in 2017 an investigation was launched to determine whether Vearey and Jacobs leaked information to the media about firearm smuggling – the core of investigations they were conducting.

This surfaced on Tuesday during a hearing into Vearey’s dismissal.

The 2017 misconduct investigation of Vearey and Jacobs was one of several internal investigations of these officers. Jacobs this year, in court papers, said he believed police bosses were persecuting him because of protected disclosures he made, including into alleged corruption at the hands of fellow police officers.

Vearey, also in court papers, has said his “dismissal is none other than a method to achieve ulterior motives of senior police management”. However, certain police officers are adamant that Vearey overstepped the line with Facebook posts he made.

Eastern Cape police commissioner Lieutenant-General Liziwe Ntshinga, who headed a disciplinary meeting into Vearey’s conduct that led up to his firing, on Tuesday testified at the hearing into his dismissal.

She spoke about the 2017 investigation and the more recent one relating to Vearey’s Facebook posts. She said that in 2017 former acting national police commissioner Khomotso Phahlane requested she conducts an investigation into Vearey and Jacobs.

Daily Maverick has reported that Phahlane was subsequently criminally charged and dismissed from the police service over a case relating to a police vehicle tender.

In the case of Vearey and Jacobs, in the run-up to the Phahlane-ordered investigation into them, they had faced stumbling blocks in relation to their work. In June 2016 they were transferred from their positions in the Western Cape while heading Project Impi, the code name for their investigations into firearm smuggling, including how police officers were getting guns to gangsters.

They argued this resulted in the project caving in before more arrests could be made.

How investigator (mis)understood Jeremy Vearey’s Facebook posts that led to the detective chief’s firing

Vearey and Jacobs fought their transfers in the Cape Town Labour Court and in August 2017 they were successful, with the court ordering that their transfers be set aside. In this labour court matter, Vearey submitted an affidavit, a section of which said: “What had become obvious to us by that stage was the potential for civil liability on the part of the SAPS. They had been in possession of thousands of firearms which they were supposed to destroy. Instead, they were released to gangs.”

Ntshinga on Tuesday confirmed that she conducted the Phahlane-ordered investigation into Vearey and Jacobs between May 2017 (a month before Phahlane was suspended) and August 2017 (the same month Vearey and Jacobs successfully fought their transfers in the labour court).

According to an internal investigation report on this matter, allegations of misconduct against Vearey and Jacobs were to be looked into because media reports contained “exactly the averments made by [them]… and the publication had the potential of exposing the South African Police Service to civil claims”.

The investigation found that the media could have obtained information about the investigations through court documents that were in the public domain.

Ntshinga’s investigation report concluded that: “The investigation against [Vearey and Jacobs] has not been able to uncover any evidence of leakage of information to the media without due authorisation.”

Vearey and Jacobs were therefore off the hook.

In 2018, after Cyril Ramaphosa became president, they were both promoted – Jacobs to head national Crime Intelligence and Vearey to Western Cape detective head in a permanent capacity.

Jacobs was controversially transferred from heading Crime Intelligence in March this year and Vearey was recently fired from his position as Western Cape detective head.

Vearey was dismissed because of a series of Facebook posts he made between December 2020 and January 2021. These posts, which included comments by Vearey above links to news articles about the police, were found to have been derogatory and threatening.

In her findings on this matter, Ntshinga said: “Having applied my mind properly to the facts and information at my disposal, having considered the circumstances under which the offence was committed, and after checking the law on the matter, I am of the view that imposing a sanction short of dismissal over such a serious offence would be tantamount to condoning the conduct of the employee.”

Ntshinga on Tuesday said she stood by her findings into the matter and still believed that Vearey’s posts were damaging to the image of the police.

“He will never change, he did not delete those posts,” she said. “It shows he will never be rehabilitated.”

Vearey also testified during the hearing on Tuesday.

He detailed some of what Project Impi had investigated, including how a former police colonel channelled about 2,000 firearms to gangs, conflict in the Eastern Cape, taxi violence in KwaZulu-Natal and military weapons smuggled “to certain governments we don’t deal with”.

Vearey said lawyers representing individuals accused of being “conduits” of firearms had been assassinated – Noorudien Hassan in 2016 and Pete Mihalik in 2018.

Both were murdered in Cape Town. For “obvious reasons” Vearey on Tuesday did not disclose whether their murders were linked to guns-to-gangs matters.

Referring to the Facebook posts that led to his dismissal, Vearey explained how some were rhetorical questions, how one was a quote from a novel that he had used as a metaphorical device and how some of his comments related to action Jacobs was taking against police.

Vearey’s explanations were markedly different from how a police officer tasked with investigating the posts had interpreted them.

Vearey also detailed his history in the police service and how this connected to Jacobs.

Vearey said he had been a member of the ANC’s Department of Intelligence and Security and a bodyguard of, among others, Nelson Mandela and anti-apartheid politician Walter Sisulu.

In the 1980s he joined Umkhonto weSizwe, as did Jacobs, and they were among 15 arrested for this and sentenced to imprisonment on Robben Island for terrorism.

On Monday during the hearing into Vearey’s dismissal, Major-General JP Scheepers, tasked with investigating Vearey’s conduct in relation to his Facebook posts, testified that he believed some of the words Vearey had used on the platform, paired with what he viewed as the context, bordered on treason.

Vearey’s legal representative, Johann Nortje, on Tuesday pointed out that Vearey’s history, as an individual who fought for democracy under the banner of Umkhonto weSizwe, was at odds with Scheepers’ testimony that Vearey’s words had been nearly treasonous.

The hearing continues. DM