A British couple living in South Africa applied for the renewal of their retirement visas and 10 days later they were allegedly asked for a R60 000 bribe. (Fani Mahuntsi/Gallo Images) 

• A British couple living in South Africa applied for the renewal of their retirement visas in December 2022. 

• After waiting for months for a response to their application, they emailed a private secretary in the minister`s office whose address they found on the Department of Home Affairs website.

• Twelve minutes later, they received an email from another home affairs official and 10 days later they were allegedly asked for a R60 000 bribe.

Just 12 minutes after a British man sent an email to a secretary in the home affairs minister`s office to ask about his retirement visa, he received a response from an official that ultimately led to an alleged demand for a R60 000 bribe.

In a sworn affidavit provided to the police, which includes copies of emails and WhatsApp conversations, Chris Campbell detailed how a request for information about the renewal of retirement visas for him and his wife led to an attempt to solicit a bribe from the couple in exchange for expediting the visas.

Campbell and his wife, Irene, applied for the renewal of their retirement visas through the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) on 14 December 2022. 

Their visas were due to expire on 19 February 2023 and they wanted to remain in South Africa.

Email trail  

More than five months later, having not heard anything about their application, Campbell sent an email to Mamokolo Sethosa, the affidavit states. 

He found her email address on the home affairs website, which lists Sethosa as a private secretary in the ministerial office.

In the email sent on 29 May 2023 at 18:15, Campbell asked Sethosa if she could ask Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi if he could indicate when they would receive their renewed retirement visas.

About 12 minutes later, Campbell received a response from another DHA official, Sabelo Mndebele, from the email address Sabelo.Mndebele@dha.gov.za, according to the affidavit.

It read: `Good day Mr and Mrs Campbell. I have received your request and will do everything in my power to assist. Can you send a scanned copy or picture of your VFS receipt. Also, can you send a contact number on which you can be reached.`

According to the DHA website, Mndebele is the Nerston Port of Entry office manager in Mpumalanga.

The following morning, on 30 May 2023, a person who identified himself as Mndebele called Campbell from a private cellphone, according to the affidavit.  

News24 is in possession of the number, which is no longer in operation.

WhatsApp messages were sent to Campbell from the same number.

Campbell alleges they discussed that there were outstanding documents relating to their visas. Mndebele told him on the phone that he had sent him an email about it, which he did from his DHA email address. 

Alleged extortion attempt

Eight days later, on 7 June 2023, Campbell said he phoned the cellphone number on which he and the person purporting to be Mndebele had originally spoken, and asked for an update on the visa paperwork.

`He replied saying that he could not recall the details and requested I send him the relevant information via WhatsApp,` Campbell said in his affidavit.

Campbell sent the information and, two days later, with no feedback, he sent another WhatsApp message requesting an update.

`Mndebele gave me a call and explained that the decision was not up to him, but he would communicate with the officials above him and see what he can organise and would call me back within 10 minutes,` Campbell said.

The contents of the conversation in the follow-up call, which was then reiterated in a WhatsApp message, was that the first time Campbell was told he would have to pay up to have the visa application expedited. 

`Mndebele called me back and further sent me a message on WhatsApp stating that in order to get the application process moving and to receive the visas in [seven to] 10 days, I would need to pay R30 000 per application,` he said in the affidavit.

In a WhatsApp message seen by News24, the person identifying as Mndebele said:

Mr Campbell, total cost is 30 000 per application, 7 to 10 days outcome. Advise we waiting your response in order to initiate the process (sic).

The WhatsApp conversation continued from 17:24 to 18:17 with back-and-forth messages about the sum of money and how to make the payment.

The conversation included Campbell asking if a lower price could be negotiated to which he was told that R20 000 per application would be accepted if payment was made immediately.

`He requested this so he could bargain with his senior officials, and then I was to bring the outstanding amount the following week,` Campbell said.

According to the affidavit, after being asked which bank account Campbell would be paying from, he was sent a `confirmation of banking details` letter. 

This letter, included in the affidavit, was for a Discovery bank account in the name of Michael Brits.

Campbell said he was unsure of how to make an immediate payment and told Mndebele that he did not have enough funds in his bank account.

He was then sent an image of an example of an FNB account with a circle drawn around the button he would need to press to make an instant payment.

Campbell told Mndebele he was having trouble logging into his bank account and would try again in the morning.

The response he said he received was: 

My guys are now annoyed with me. Let`s cancel. I made them wait here till this late.

Deleted messages 

According to Campbell, no money was ever paid. 

Once Mndebele began deleting his WhatsApp messages, Campbell saved a second copy of the conversation to be able to prove what he was up to. 

News24 sent questions to the Department of Home Affairs on Monday last week. No responses were forthcoming, despite several follow-up calls. 

News24 also sent emails to both Mndebele and Sethosa`s official email addresses on Friday morning. Their responses will be added if received.

Police investigation

Campbell told News24 that he opened a criminal case at the Sandringham Police Station in Johannesburg on 13 June 2023.

However, he said he had only spoken to two detectives on two occasions since then.

Hawks spokesperson Brigadier Thandi Mbambo confirmed that a corruption case had been opened.

`The docket was first investigated at station level before the docket was transferred to SCI corruption in August 2023. The investigating officer whom the docket was assigned to was promoted elsewhere ... which prompted it to be assigned the current IO [investigating officer] in November 2023,` Mbambo said.

`The IO called the complainant in February to seek clarity in terms of the account number in question as part of an ongoing investigation.`

Mbambo said the investigation conducted so far had revealed that the `alleged official` was not known at the department.

`Investigation still continues and any developments on the case will be communicated with the complainant.`

Senior counsel Mike Hellens and Dawie Joubert – who routinely act for the Gupta family – were arrested by Namibian authorities for alleged immigration violations in November 2019 and pleaded guilty hours after they were detained. 

• They later took their arrest and conviction on review in the Namibian High Court in Windhoek, which found the immigration official who detained them to have done so based on a "very serious and dangerous misreading of the law". 

• The Namibian government has now successfully appealed that ruling, after the Namibian Supreme Court dismissed a separate application by Hellens and Joubert to appeal their convictions.

Senior counsel Mike Hellens has slammed a Namibian Supreme Court ruling that dismissed his and his colleague Dawie Joubert's claims they were unlawfully coerced into pleading guilty to immigration fraud as "a shocking failure of justice".

On Friday, three Supreme Court judges ruled in favour of Namibia's Home Affairs Minister Albert Kawana, who appealed a high court's findings that Hellens and Joubert's arrests were characterised by "gross irregularity" and should therefore be set aside as unlawful.

"I feel no doubt in my mind in concluding that the applicants [Hellens and Joubert] have established that a good ground exists to review and set aside the conduct or act complained of," Acting Judge C Parker stated in the now-invalidated high court decision.

Supreme Deputy Chief Justice Petrus Damaseb and judges Hosea Angula and Shafimana Ueitele disagreed with Parker's decision and, in a ruling written by Angula, held that Hellens and Joubert "had failed to prove that they were coerced to plead guilty and that such coercion constituted an irregularity in the proceedings". 

"There is nothing on record [to] suggest that their pleas had not been made voluntarily. 

"In this regard, their plea explanations demonstrate that the pleas had been made freely and voluntarily with full appreciation of their consequences," the Supreme Court found.

Hellens and Joubert are well-known criminal defence advocates who regularly represent the Gupta family and their associates in trials. 

They previously acted for former president Jacob Zuma and his son, Duduzane.

Mike Hellens and Dawie Joubert were set to represent Bernhard Esau and five others when they were arrested in Namibia.

At the time of their arrests in November 2019, Hellens and Joubert were set to represent six accused, including former Namibian ministers Bernhard Esau and Sacky Shanghala, in a bail application for the high-profile "Fish-rot" corruption case.

The case emanated from claims made by whistleblower Johannes Stefansson, who alleged that Icelandic fishing company Samherji had paid millions of dollars, through tax havens such as Cyprus and the Marshall Islands, to bribe high-level officials in Namibia for trawling rights. 

With an annual turnover of $700 million (R13.5 billion), Samherji is one of the largest fishing companies in the world.

When Hellens and Joubert applied for entry to Namibia to argue the Fish-rot bail application, they said they were in the country for a visit and a meeting, and were granted visitors' permits. 

They then used their first day in Namibia to prepare for their clients' bail applications, which were scheduled for the following day in the Windhoek Magistrate's Court.

Before that bail application could go ahead, however, Hellens and Joubert were arrested by an immigration officer and charged with contravening the provisions of Namibia's Immigration Control Act. 

They faced charges of rendering services as legal practitioners without an employment permit and furnishing false or misleading information to the immigration officers who gave them visitors' permits.

Hellens, who has acted for the defence and the State in several African countries, previously told News24 that he had never experienced the kind of reception he received in Namibia in any other country he had practised law.

He said:

I was shocked. We were locked up for four and a half hours in a cell with our own clients on a Friday and told we would be spending until 8 March [2020], from late November [2019], in custody because we were a flight risk.

"And if we got bail, we would be constrained to remain in Namibia for three months."

As a result, he said, they decided to plead guilty to charges of working in Namibia without having the required employment permits and furnishing false or misleading information to an immigration officer [by claiming they were in Namibia for a meeting rather than a court case].

They were each sentenced to fines totalling N$10 000 (R10 000) or a prison term of 18 months.

When Hellens and Joubert reviewed their convictions, after also unsuccessfully appealing them, they argued that the attorney who had briefed them had not told them they needed a work permit to act in Namibia. 

Instead, they said, they had successfully applied for so-called s85(2) certificates which allowed them to practice law in Namibia.

Mike Hellens and Dawie Joubert are well-known criminal defence advocates who regularly represent the Gupta family. 

They said that after learning the State intended to oppose their bail because they were South African citizens and a flight risk, and that they would be charged with fraud if they did not plead guilty to the two counts against them, they admitted guilt under duress. 

According to Hellens and Joubert, they pleaded guilty "to all the elements insofar as required (with obvious reservations, subtle in nature, and intended to allow the reader of the transcript of the proceedings to see that we were under duress and not willingly admitting all the elements of the offences)".

While that evidence persuaded the high court that Hellens and Joubert were unlawfully arrested and their convictions should be overturned, Angula and his colleagues were not persuaded – and found that the high court should not have considered their review application after their appeals against their convictions had been dismissed.

Angula also found Hellens and Joubert's alleged unlawful arrest "did not directly relate to the actual proceedings and did not have the effect of causing [them] to plead guilty". 

"That being the case, it follows therefore as a matter of logic and common sense that since they did not know, at the time when they plead guilty, that their arrests were unlawful, it could not have influenced them to plead guilty," he said, adding that Hellens and Joubert's guilty pleas were binding on them and were not vitiated by their allegedly unlawful arrests.

Regarding Hellens and Joubert's evidence that they were coerced into pleading guilty, Angula said their "feeble attempt to blame the prosecution for their misfortune is not convincing". 

The prosecutor in the case denied saying the pair would be forced to stay in jail over the weekend if they did not plead guilty.

"It needs pointing out in this connection that the prosecution has an obligation to oppose the granting of bail if the circumstance warrants it.

"It is ultimately for the court to decide whether to grant bail or not. 

"In my view, the mere fact that the prosecution intimated that it would oppose a bail application was not a bar to [Hellens and Joubert] to apply for bail and did not constitute a coercive act."

According to Angula, it was "clear from the papers that [Hellens and Joubert] were not interested in applying for bail". 

"They were determined to plead guilty after they were informed by their counsel that the State was prepared to ask for a sentence of a fine and not for a custodial sentence. 

"It is clear that [Hellens and Joubert] were simply not prepared to spend the weekend in the holding cell waiting for their bail application."

Hellens told News24 he and Joubert would take advice on their next move.

Johannesburg Society of Advocates (JSA) chairperson Greta Engelbrecht said the organisation's professional committee had initially decided not to investigate Hellens and Joubert over their convictions in Windhoek in November 2019 because they had successfully reviewed those convictions and sentences in a civil court process.

Now that this decision has been reversed and their appeals dismissed, she said, the JSA professional committee would again consider the matter.