NPA Amendment Bill signing
24 May 2024
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) welcomes the President’s signing into law of the National Prosecuting Authority Amendment Act to establish the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC) as a permanent and adequately empowered entity.
This groundbreaking development will create a permanent prosecution-led unit, within the National Prosecuting Authority, with criminal investigative powers to pursue the most complex forms of corruption and associated crimes, in line with its mandate. This accords with international best practice, to protect anti-corruption entities from political interference. It also gives the IDAC the critical powers and resources it needs to succeed with the tried and tested prosecution-led model that has been utilised so effectively in South Africa in the past.
IDAC replaces the Investigating Directorate (ID) that was established in 2019. The mandate of the IDAC is to investigate, and where appropriate, institute criminal proceedings and carry out necessary functions incidental to investigations and instituting criminal proceedings, relating to serious, high-profile or complex corruption or commercial or financial crime cases arising from the recommendations of commissions of inquiry; referred to the Investigating Director by the National Director; referred to the Investigating Director in terms of section 27 of the NPA Act; and relating to such other existing offences or categories of offences as determined by the President by Proclamation No. 20 of 2019.
Despite its pivotal role in leading South Africa’s criminal justice response to high-level corruption, the ID was statutorily not a permanent entity within the NPA. The ID was established by proclamation and the executive had the power to amend or revoke such a proclamation. The other key constraining factor for the previous ID was that it did not possess the required criminal investigative powers and had to rely on a patchwork of seconded staff from various partner entities who could be recalled at any time, and whose line function managers remained in the partner entities, outside the ID.