Firearms dealer Alan Raves and gun shop owner Irshaad Laher face 20 counts related to an alleged gun sales racket linked to many gang murders in the Western Cape.
The men are accused of supplying guns stolen from police and military stores to gangs. Their trial, however, was postponed once again last Tuesday. The case began almost six years ago when Raves was arrested on 19 August 2015.
Since then Raves’s lawyer, Pete Mihalik and Laher’s attorney, Noorudien Hassan, were murdered in 2018 and 2016 respectively. Anti-Gang Unit detective Charl Kinnear, who had been investigating a large gun licensing racket, was murdered in 2020.
Raves was a registered firearm collector and dealer, and could approve any firearm for collection. Laher was a registered heritage inspector, who checked firearms for potential heritage value before they were destroyed. He also had a gun shop.
The investigation, called “Project Impi”, was launched in December 2013 in the Western Cape by Majors-General Jeremy Vearey and Peter Jacobs.
Vearey has recently been fired over a Facebook post criticising police commissioner Khehla Sitole, and Jacobs faces court battles over his position in the police.
In 2016 Colonel Chris Prinsloo was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment on more than 20 charges of racketeering, corruption and money laundering relating to the sale of around 2 000 guns.
He was released on parole and is expected to become a witness, together with a Colonel Naidoo. They are accused of bypassing gun laws by selling old police and military weapons meant for destruction.
The guns came from police stores containing confiscated, old or heritage weapons, and the stores of the Durban Light Infantry.
Firearms confiscated by the police or handed in for destruction were kept in an unauthorised firearms store opened by Prinsloo and Naidoo in Germiston. Guns or parts of weapons which were supposed to be fragmented or melted were kept in the Confiscated Firearm Store in Silverton, where Prinsloo was in charge.
The State alleges they were part of an organised criminal enterprise, where firearms meant for destruction were stolen, had serial numbers changed, and were then sold to gangs in Cape Town from 2006 to 2015.
Raves and Laher face charges of corruption, theft of firearms, illegal possession and selling or supplying of firearms and ammunition, possession of firearms or ammunition with the intent to commit an offence, possession of firearm parts, tampering with firearms’ serial numbers or identifying marks, possession of prohibited firearms in which serial numbers or identifying marks were removed, fraud for saying that up to 2 400 firearms had been destroyed, and money laundering.
They also face charges related to the theft of 18 weapons from the Durban Light Infantry, disposal of SANDF property without authorisation, fraud, and not keeping proper firearm registers.