Gangster State

venture’s FNB account to an account held by 605 Consulting
Solutions, the company he had registered earlier that year. The next
day, Christmas Eve, he paid R 1 million from 605 Consulting’s account
to Kingdom Impact General Trading. The payment was marked as
‘Consulting Services Invoice 001 ’. It was not a once-off payment. On
24 August 2016 , just after the FSHS transferred its final payment to
the Blackhead–Diamond Hill joint account, one Motsamai Kareli
emailed an invoice for R 990 000 to Mpambani for ‘professional
engineering services’. It was made out to 605 Consulting Solutions.
That same day, Mpambani transferred R 990 000 from 605
Consulting’s FNB account to Kingdom Impact. We therefore know for
a fact that Mpambani channelled at least R 1. 9 million to Kingdom
Impact in two payments that were made right after Blackhead–
Diamond Hill received money from the Free State government.
For those in the business of uncovering corruption, money laundering
and other dodgy dealings, terms such as ‘consulting services’ count
among the most common red flags. Paying third parties for vaguely
described services such as consulting is one of the ways in which
facilitators of bribes channel large payments to venal politicians or
officials. And when the third party is unable to provide evidence that it
performed any actual work, the alarm bells start to sound.
Kingdom Impact’s sole director is a woman named Thulisiwe Kareli.
Her husband, Motsamai Kareli, is the founder and senior pastor of the
evangelical Empowerment Ministries International church in
Bloemfontein. While Thulisiwe is also a pastor and heavily involved in
the church, she has held other jobs. I found her name on a 2015 tender
document from Centlec, the Mangaung metro municipality’s state-
owned power distributor. She worked in Centlec’s procurement