NPA exceeds its performance targets

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Cape Town – The National Director of Public Prosecutions, Mxolisi Nxasana, says the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has achieved a second consecutive clean audit, thanks to good administration.

Briefing journalists in Parliament on Tuesday, Nxasana said the NPA had exceeded most of its targets in its key performance areas, and that it recorded “reasonable” improvement in significant indicators.

“The NPA is proud to have achieved another clean audit for two years in a row, which signifies serious commitment of the organisation to lead in clean governance and compliance to legislative and regulatory prescripts of government,” he said.

Nxasana said this after presenting the NPA’s 2013/14 annual report to the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development.

The presentation focused on four key performance areas – general and specialised prosecutions, asset forfeiture and witness protection.

Stats show NPA has recorded improvement

Highlighting some of the achievements, Nxasana said the National Prosecutions Service (NPS) played a key role in ensuring that the agency achieved increased successful general prosecutions.

The NPS achieved superior conviction rates at all court levels, which includes 93.6%, or 273 641 cases at all district courts, 76% (27 246 cases) at regional courts and 88% (911 cases) at all high courts.

The number of criminal cases that were finalised with a verdict amounted to 329 153, which Nxasana said were slightly below target.

There were 1 323 plea and sentence agreements that were concluded successfully over the past year, comprising 7 439 counts. Fifty-four percent of all agreements resulted in direct imprisonment.

Some 439 organised crime cases were finalised in the past year, with a conviction rate of 88.9%.

Under trio crimes (house robberies, vehicle hijackings and business robberies), a conviction rate of 84.1% was achieved from the 1 899 cases that were finalised in the year under review and a target of 66% conviction rate for all sexual offences cases was exceeded by 1.1%.

He said the NPA improved the prosecution of cybercrime cases by finalising 211 cases with a conviction rate of 94.8%.

Officials nabbed for corruption

Nxasana said in the year under review, 73 officials were convicted on charges of corruption.

This includes 48 officials from the SA Police Service, 16 from the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, four from Home Affairs, two from the Department of Defence and Military Veterans and one from the NPA, amongst others.

Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) freezes crime

Nxasana said under the AFU, the unit had ensured that profits were removed from crime.

He said the AFU obtained 363 freezing orders over the past year, which was 29% above the target and 9% higher than its previous best performance of 333 in 2010/ 11.

The value of the freezing orders amounted to R701.5 million, which was 1.2% below target.

“It had an excellent year and its performance was, on average, about 20% above the previous highest performance levels in the four main indicators that measure volume of work done, namely the number and value of freezing and forfeiture orders.

“A large part of the improved performance of the AFU can be attributed to an increased focus on high value cases and close working relationship with the Hawks, and Special Investigating Unit.

Many of the cases were done through civil forfeiture or non-conviction based process in Chapter 6 of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act, said Nxasana. - SAnews.gov.za