The Hawks have submitted 13 dockets alleging fraud and money laundering involving National Lotteries Commission grants to the NPA for a decision on whether to prosecute. (Illustration: Lisa Nelson) There was a sudden flurry of cases referred to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) by the Hawks in the weeks after they failed to pitch for a parliamentary briefing on their ongoing investigation into the lottery in late March.
Within days of the meeting, and in the weeks that followed, the Hawks submitted 13 dockets alleging fraud and money laundering involving National Lotteries Commission grants to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) for a decision on whether to prosecute.
Two dockets were submitted within days of the hearing. Two more were submitted in April, and nine more in May.
Many of these cases had been reported to the Hawks several years earlier, between 2020 and 2022, the rest in 2023 and 2024, and two cases in 2025.
During the March meeting, both the NPA and the Special Investigating Unit briefed Parliament’s trade and industry portfolio committee, which has oversight of the lottery, on their progress in holding those involved to account. At the time, Andre Hermans, the committee secretary, told MPs that he had tried to contact the South African Police Service (SAPS) to confirm its attendance, but “could not get hold of them”.
‘No invitation received’
But Lieutenant-General ST Nkosi, acting head of the SAPS Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, the official name for the Hawks, told the committee on Wednesday, 3 June 2026, that they did not attend because an invitation was never received.
At the March meeting, the NPA placed much of the blame for delays in prosecutions at the door of the SAPS.
A key reason identified by the NPA for the lack of lottery-related prosecutions was the failure by the Hawks to appoint forensic accountants in almost all cases of complicated lottery fraud and corruption they are investigating. The role of these accountants is to guide investigators and also analyse the financial evidence collected.
The Special Investigating Unit previously told Parliament that it was investigating dodgy grants totalling more than R2-billion.
On Wednesday, Nkosi told MPs that the Hawks were currently investigating 33 lottery-related cases, of which two were in court, 17 had been referred to the NPA, and 14 were still under investigation.
“In each case, grant funds disbursed by the National Lotteries Commission were never applied to their stated purposes,” Nkosi said. “Instead, funds were redirected to private individuals and associated entities – including, in multiple instances, to serving or former employees of the commission itself.”
‘A pattern of organised crime’
Evidence, including an auditor’s report, had revealed “a pattern of organised crime involving the same suspects across several cases”, he said.
“Clear linkages have been identified in the modus operandi, particularly where certain applications relied on the same NPO constitution, and identical sets of financial records… No legitimate NPO can have a constitution or financial records that are word-for-word identical to another organisation’s [constitution],” he said
The National Lotteries Commission also updated MPs on Wednesday on progress with its own investigations. The commission’s head of legal, Lesedi Boihang, said that it referred 99 cases, valued at over R121-million, to the SAPS between 2023/24 and 2025/26
In addition, it also referred 194 cases valued at R347-million to the Special Investigating Unit between 2023/24 and 2025/26. This included 126 cases under an extended proclamation granted in October 2025, which allowed the unit to investigate dodgy procurement.
One issue that the commission had identified, according to Boihang, was problems with statements and affidavits supplied to the Hawks by former members of staff.
These included “material inconsistencies” and “irregularities” that required “corrective intervention”, he said. They had included “half-truths, and in some cases they were patently misleading” and “self-serving”.
Boihang said the National Lotteries Commission’s legal department was currently conducting a process, which would be concluded by the end of June, to ensure that “all affidavits going to the DPCI [Hawks] and other competent authorities… are factually correct and legally defensible”. DM
This article first appeared in GroundUp.