A senior police officer has told South Africa's Madlanga Commission of Inquiry that R55 million worth of cocaine disappeared from a forensic science laboratory after being seized in Johannesburg in 2021.
Colonel Francois Steyn, who heads the Gauteng Hawks’ West Rand Serious Organised Crime Unit, testified on Monday that the missing drugs formed part of a 715.86kg consignment intercepted in Aeroton on 9 July 2021.
The shipment was moved from Booysens police station to a Pretoria police college and then to a forensic laboratory. When Steyn requested access in December 2024, staff could not locate the full amount. By February 2025 the cocaine weighed only 579.40kg, leaving 136.46kg unaccounted for.
Steyn described the original crime scene as close to chaos. The testimony follows last week’s evidence to the same commission about a separate R200 million cocaine theft from a Hawks building in KwaZulu-Natal in 2021.
