Career cop Major General Richard Shibiri has described how organised crime networks gradually compromise police officers. He's now accused of succumbing to the same techniques.

On Major-General Richard Shibiri's first day of testimony at the Madlanga Commission earlier in March, he spent considerable time explaining how organised crime syndicates infiltrate law enforcement structures.

In the opening pages of his 81-page statement, the police's head of organised crime described the scale of alleged infiltration and explained how it unfolded.

"The nature of such infiltration is seldom overt. It typically occurs through gradual compromise of individuals and processes rather than formal institutional capture," reads his statement, which includes a list of instances where cops have been caught out.

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According to his account, syndicates attempt to bribe investigators, prosecutors, court officials and forensic staff, while also using police insiders to monitor investigators and witnesses. Sometimes cops end up working as criminals. In some cases, the pressure escalates to intimidation, threats and even violence against investigators and their families.

Shibiri joined the police in 1988 and holds a diploma and bachelor's degree in policing. He said it wasn't a new phenomenon and agreed that "in some instances... criminal syndicates have infiltrated or exerted influence within law enforcement structures".

What he described echoes explosive remarks made months earlier by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, who alleged...