A significant increase in lottery fraud and money laundering cases has been referred to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) by the Hawks in the weeks following their absence from a parliamentary briefing on the ongoing National Lotteries Commission (NLC) investigation in late March.
Within days of the parliamentary meeting, and throughout the following weeks, the Hawks submitted 13 dockets alleging fraud and money laundering involving NLC grant funding to the NPA for decisions on whether prosecutions should proceed. Two dockets were submitted within days of the hearing, followed by two more in April and a further nine in May.
Many of the cases had originally been reported to the Hawks several years earlier, between 2020 and 2022, while others were reported in 2023 and 2024. Two additional cases were reported in 2025. The March briefing saw both the NPA and the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) update Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Trade, Industry and Competition, which oversees the lottery sector, on efforts to hold those implicated in lottery-related corruption accountable.
At the time, committee secretary Andre Hermans informed Members of Parliament that he had attempted to contact the South African Police Service (SAPS) to confirm attendance but “could not get hold of them”. However, Lieutenant General ST Nkosi, Acting Head of the SAPS Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI), commonly known as the Hawks, told the committee that the unit’s absence was due to not receiving an invitation.
During the March briefing, the NPA attributed much of the delay in lottery-related prosecutions to shortcomings in police investigations. One of the primary concerns raised by the NPA was the Hawks’ failure to appoint forensic accountants in nearly all of the complex lottery fraud and corruption cases under investigation. Forensic accountants play a critical role in guiding investigators and analyzing financial evidence collected during investigations.
The SIU previously informed Parliament that it was investigating questionable lottery grants amounting to more than R2 billion. Providing an update to MPs, Nkosi revealed that the Hawks are currently investigating 33 lottery-related cases. Of these, two are already before the courts, 17 have been referred to the NPA, and 14 remain under active investigation.
“In each case, grant funds disbursed by the NLC 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 NLC itself.”
Nkosi further stated that evidence gathered, including findings contained in an auditor’s report, had revealed “a pattern of organised crime involving the same suspects across several cases”.
“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 provided Parliament with an update on the progress of its own investigations. According to NLC Head of Legal Lesedi Bohang, the Commission referred 99 cases, valued at more than R121 million, to SAPS between the 2023/24 and 2025/26 financial years.
In addition, the NLC referred 194 cases valued at R347 million to the SIU during the same period. This figure includes 126 cases falling under an extended proclamation granted in October 2025, which expanded the SIU’s mandate to investigate questionable procurement activities.
Bohang indicated that one of the challenges identified by the NLC involved statements and affidavits submitted to the Hawks by former employees. According to Bohang, these documents contained “material inconsistencies” and “irregularities” that required “corrective intervention”. He further stated that some submissions contained “half-truths, and in some cases they were patently misleading” and “self-serving”.
To address these concerns, Bohang confirmed that the NLC’s legal department is currently undertaking a verification process, scheduled for completion 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”.
The developments form part of broader efforts by law enforcement agencies and oversight institutions to strengthen accountability and advance investigations into alleged misuse of National Lotteries Commission funding.
