Gangster State

to an end in around 2012. Mpambani, now back in Magashule’s
favour, needed new entities through which he could continue to do
business in the Free State. In 2012 , he co-founded Diamond Hill
Trading 71 with Kato Motsoeneng, a former municipal manager in the
province’s Tswelopele and Mohokare local municipalities.
Motsoeneng’s last stint as a municipal manager had ended under
suspicious circumstances in late 2010 , when he resigned from the
Mohokare municipality, based in the southern Free State town of
Zastron, amid a graft investigation commissioned by the Department of
Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.^16 Like Mpambani,
Motsoeneng was said to be close to Magashule.
Mpambani next registered 605 Consulting Solutions in July 2014. His
wife, Michelle, would later become a director of this venture. Although
he was still involved in the Beach on the Track event and other
business projects in the Free State, Mpambani and Michelle chose to
settle in Johannesburg. He was ready for the big league.
It was in 2014 that Mpambani and a coterie of businesspeople,
politici​ans and government officials apparently began to mastermind
the looting of more than R 250 million from the Free State
government’s coffers. Based on several records, timelines and
interviews with sources, it seems clear that Magashule became a key
figure in this saga. The leaked documents and emails I refer to as the
IgoFiles especially fuel suspicions that the then premier was closely
linked to Mpambani and that he had benefited from the asbestos audit.