Municipal investigators fear they have stumbled upon another mess in the Cape Town Traffic Department, with top officers suspected of stealing impounded vehicles.
A probe into the disappearance of a car parked at Gallow's Hill yard in Green Point last month uncovered evidence suggesting impounded cars may have been stolen by traffic officers.
Officers being questioned by investigators started pointing fingers at their colleagues and in so doing exposed more evidence of cars being removed from the pound "under false pretences" instead of being auctioned.
Police spokesperson Peter Sorrel said municipal investigators were checking records going back to 1998.
In recent years, the traffic department has been rocked by several internal scams, including theft, corruption, driver's licence fraud and claims of mismanagement.
Sorrel confirmed that the latest investigation involved retired and still-serving traffic officers as well as civilians.
A senior traffic department source said "all hell broke loose" this week when internal forensic investigations chief Rod Strange closed in on a former traffic officer who had recently been promoted to a divisional commander's post in the municipal police.
Strange refused to discuss the case but Sorrel confirmed that a "sensitive" investigation was under way which was producing enough damning evidence to warrant criminal action.
Sorrel said charges of fraud, theft and perjury could be brought against the suspects after the internal investigation had been completed.
City fathers were keen to put the lid on corrupt employees to rid the traffic department of its tainted image.
The investigation into theft from the pound was prompted by a Cape Argus investigation which found that an abandoned vehicle had been removed from the pound and registered in the name of a traffic officer's close relative before the car could be auctioned.
The car was a Volkswagen Beetle which had been towed in from Kloof Street in February 1998.
At the time, traffic officers discovered that the Beetle's registered owner, a Rondebosch doctor, had emigrated to Australia. Three months later the car, still unclaimed and due to be auctioned, was released to a Mrs Smith, ostensibly its "rightful" owner.
This was done on the basis of a copy of her ID document and an affidavit in which she stated that she had bought the car without registration papers.
When the Cape Argus traced Dalene Smith she said that she had never owned a Beetle. She denied claiming the vehicle and said she had never written the affidavit.
But Smith remembered losing her ID book about the time the Beetle was released from Gallow's Hill. Allegations that a traffic officer had a "stash of ID books" which were being used in "dubious dealings" surfaced later.
Meanwhile, almost two years passed until March 2000 when an Athlone car mechanic, who turned out to be the brother-in-law of a traffic officer, registered the vehicle.
Rumours at the time were rife that the same traffic officer's son was driving the unlicensed car until it was sold to his uncle.
The investigation later uncovered another false affidavit, this time filed in the unicity's vehicle registration department, in which the mechanic stated that he had bought the Beetle at a Traffic Department auction without papers, contrary to Gallow's Hill records which showed that Smith had paid R435 to have the same car released to her.
The mechanic later sold the car for R5 000 to a Wynberg resident.