The money trails between alleged underworld kingpin Nafiz Modack and his accused were laid bare at the Western Cape High Court on Monday.
In an intricate number crunching investigation, the Hawks lifted the veil on how money moved between Modack’s wife, his brother Yaseen and co-accused Mogamat Adiel Mukudam.
Central to the investigation into the money laundering charges are the transactions made using the bank account of Empire Car Investments, based at a house in Lentegeur.
Testifying before Judge Robert Henney, Hawks detectives explained how they tracked Yaseen and Mukudam in 2021 just months after Modack was busted in a dramatic arrest in Century City along with co-accused Ziyaad Poole.
Captain Edward Du Plessis told the court that while they discovered a sale agreement between Yaseen and Mukudam dating back to 5 May 2019 they found that he started receiving large amounts of money a year later.
Mukudam told cops he bought the business for R80K but Yaseen claims it was R100 000 and that he was paid in cash.
Du Plessis analysed Mukudam’s Capitec bank account which reflected a balance of just 47 cents, despite him being the director of an investment company.
A year later his first salary payment of R100 000 was paid into an Absa Bank account opened by Mukudam. Several large payments were also received from Empire Car Investments.
Cops became suspicious after they found Mukudam’s Absa Bank card in Modack’s gold Toyota Raider on 29 April 2021 when he as arrested.
They suspected that Mukudam had opened the Absa account for someone else and requested a copy of the cash send records of the account and found over 100 transactions where Mukudam had sent money to himself using his cellphone number.
“Why would he send so much cash-sends to himself [if he were in charge of the account?]. It was very odd,” Du Plessis said.
Bank records also show multiple payments from Empire Car Investments to the account of Modack’s wife, referencing her business.
This is despite Mukudam’s claim that he had no business dealings with her.
Money also moved from the Empire account to Modack’s younger sister labelled as ‘salary’, ‘commission’ and ‘fuel’ from July 2018 to September 2020.
monique.duval@inl.co.za