At the height of a high-stakes criminal investigation into alleged organised crime boss, Ralph Stanfield and his criminally co-accused wife, Nicole Johnson, police bought thousands of litres of diesel from one of their family businesses, with another also registered as a fuel supplier.
And, as amaBhungane has discovered from SAPS financial and supply chain management documents, police not only violated National Treasury regulations when they contracted the business, but on at least one occasion paid five times more than the average retail price for the diesel.
Officers seemingly used loadshedding as an excuse for the procurement.
Discovery of the paradoxical situation of police contracting Stanfield’s associated company while investigating him comes as prosecutors make final preparations for the infamous couple’s upcoming trial.
Stanfield and Johnson, together with 12 of their suspected associates from their alleged criminal organisation, which is known as The Firm, go on trial in the Western Cape High Court on 19 October. They are charged under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act for, among other alleged crimes, attempted murder, murder, fraud and money laundering.
AmaBhungane has previously reported how Stanfield was able to trade on his reputation as an enforcer to develop relationships and bag contracts with big private property and investment sector players to commercially develop an area around Cape Town International Airport and how he maneuvered his way onto a beleaguered presidential project for the reconstruction of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa’s vandalised Central Line in Cape Town.
Now, AmaBhungane can reveal, based on police supply chain management documents and other evidence, how Cape Town based police did business with a company that is, according to a credible source, a key component in the operations of the Stanfield-Johnson shadow business enterprise.
Shadow enterprise
As well as construction and facilitation management companies, the Stanfield-Johnson enterprise consists of several fuel businesses, including a service station and a diesel distribution company.
Evidence suggests that it was through her NJ Diesel Distributors, that Johnson imported diesel from Mozambique into South Africa where she apparently sold it on Gauteng’s East Rand and in Cape Town.
What can be revealed now is that between October 2022 and March 2023 Cape Town’s Lentegeur and Nyanga police stations and the Bishop Lavis police training academy were regularly buying diesel from the couple’s John Ramsay Service Station.
In total, police bought nearly 3,000 litres of Stanfield-linked diesel for their generators, all surprisingly without triggering any internal supply chain management alarms.
The service station is located in Cape Town’s suburb of Bishop Lavis, a known 28s street gang stronghold.
The two police stations are managed by the Western Cape provincial police office, while the academy is administered by the SAPS national training office.
Current and former police supply chain management sources claim that concluding contracts with a business with known links to the Stanfield-Johnson enterprise should immediately have raised “major red flags”.
“All the purchase signoffs would have to have come from senior management both at station and provincial level. These officers would receive regular intelligence briefings on all manner of crimes in the city. They would be in the know about investigations into people like Stanfield. Importantly they would know that these investigations would be looking into businesses linked to organised crime gangs,” said a current SAPS supply chain manager.
The officer, who is based in Cape Town, said: “There is also no way that you are a commander of a police station in these areas and you don’t know that Stanfield and his family controls that petrol station.”
A community policing forum source, who operates within the Lentegeur policing precinct and who asked not to be identified because of security concerns, said “no one can say you don’t know who owns that garage.
“Everyone on the [Cape] Flats knows who the owners are. It is no secret that Ralph and Nicole run it. You don’t have to be a special [police] investigator to know.”
Attempts to get comment via the couple’s lawyer were unsuccessful.
AmaBhungane’s dissection of the service station’s business structure using Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) documents, publicly available court records from one of Stanfield’s bail applications and Google searches reveals extensive connections between the business, Stanfield and his family that go back at least 29 years.
Family connections
CIPC records show the John Ramsay Service Station has been associated both directly and indirectly with Stanfield and his family since 1997, when his aunt, Sharifa Stanfield, was first appointed as a member of the close corporation (as it was then). Sharifa is the former wife of Stanfield’s late uncle, organised crime boss and convicted tax evader, Colin Stanfield.
Records show Ralph Stanfield himself became a member on 28 June 2004 resigning eight years later on 6 November 2012 when two of his associated trusts, the Stanfield Family Trust and the Ralcole Family Trust, along with Johnson, were appointed members. He was reappointed as a representative trustee on the CC the same day that the trusts and Johnson were appointed.
While CIPC records show Stanfield and the Stanfield Family Trust officially resigned from the company on 27 June 2014, circumstantial information suggests that, until his and Johnson’s arrest on 29 September 2023, Stanfield remained fully involved in the service station’s financial operations.
CIPC records show that in October 2024, a month after police conducted a raid on the service station, Johnson seemingly tried to create distance between herself and the business by resigning. Her mother, Barbara Johnson, was then appointed its sole director.
How – and importantly why – police missed these family connections, and whether procurement red flags were deliberately or conveniently ignored, remains unknown.
Police management this month launched an enquiry into the contracting after amaBhungane began asking questions, but blamed Eskom’s “loadshedding” and said officers were trying “to ensure the continuity of essential operations”.
Turning a blind eye
National Treasury procurement rules require companies wanting to do business with government to be registered on its Central Supplier Database (CSD), which is exactly what Johnson did in 2021.
A CSD registration report shows that on 13 June 2021, she registered the service station as a government supplier.
How this happened though is questionable, given that Johnson was under sequestration at the time. Both Johnson and Stanfield were sequestrated in January 2019, with the Western Cape High Court only issuing their rehabilitation certificates in April 2023, a month after their last diesel delivery to police.
The Insolvency Act prohibits an unrehabilitated sequestrated person from managing a company or being involved in the management of a Close Corporation, which the service station was until December 2023 when Johnson reregistered it with CIPC as a propriety limited business.
The effect of the legislation is that, because Johnson (who at the time was the service station’s sole member when the police contracted it) was sequestrated the business would have had no legal management to authorise the signing of such contracts.
The contracting of Johnson while she was sequestrated appears not to be the only procurement rules breached by the SAPS.
SARS records show that at the time neither Johnson nor the service station were apparently tax compliant.
AmaBhungane has learnt from a SARS source that in June 2026 the Receiver issued a final letter of demand against Johnson and the service station over unpaid tax debts.
The letter related to findings from an audit – concluded on 19 September 2024 – on the service station for the 2019 to 2023 tax years. It was during this time that the police contracted the service station.
The audit revealed that the service station reportedly owed R54.4-million in company income tax and R148,156.72 in PAYE. An audit on Johnson, which was concluded on 29 November 2024, assessed her tax debt to be R31.6-million for the 2019 to 2023 tax years.
AmaBhungane understands the service station objected to the assessment and applied for a condonation. Both the objection and condonation request were rejected, with SARS issuing a final letter of demand in June 2026. It is unknown whether the service station and Johnson have since settled their tax debts.
SARS declined to discuss the taxpayers’ affairs.
The diesel orders
The first order to be placed was by Nyanga police station, which sourced diesel on five different occasions from the service station between 28 September 2022 and 28 October 2022.
During that month historical loadshedding data shows that loadshedding was varying between stages 2 and 4.
A police order form, stamped by the station’s commander, and financial records, all of which carry the service station’s SAPS supplier number, show that in total Johnson’s business was paid R38,131.64 for the supplies.
It is not known how the service station, which is 10km away from the police station was selected or why one of five other closer filling stations, including one right next door, were not used.
When it came to the academy, police financial records show that between 6 November 2022 and 31 March 2023, the service station made 12 deliveries of diesel for which the SAPS paid R130,587.10.
An order form from the academy shows that in its first order, which was on 6 November 2022, the commander signed off on a payment to the service station for R122,364.00, for the delivery of 990 litres of diesel. For that delivery the SAPS paid about R123 per litre. Fuel Industry Association of South Africa historical data shows that the coastal price for diesel at the time was R24.83 per litre.
While it is not known why the academy paid R123 per litre or why so many orders were placed, loadshedding was hovering between stage 2 and stage 6.
Supply chain management documents show that an officer from Lentegeur police station, which is situated 17km from the service station with 13 other filling stations closer to it, wrote to the service station on behalf of the station commissioner and requested that it bid on a tender for the supply of 900 litres of diesel.
The letter, which was written on 22 December 2022, shows that the closing date of the bid was a week later, on 29 December 2022. Johnson submitted the service station’s bid of R22,176.00 the following day, on 23 December 2022.
But wait, there’s more
Evidence unearthed by amaBhungane shows the service station was not the only Stanfield-Johnson enterprise company registered as a police fuel supplier.
Our investigation has revealed that another company registered to supply diesel was one of the couple’s other companies, Yibaninati.
Information on the SAPS system shows it is also registered as a fuel supplier, with Johnson listed as the contact person with her email address and cellphone number.
While amaBhungane has been unable to ascertain as to whether the police ever bought fuel from the business, our investigations into the operations of the Stanfield-Johnson empire, have revealed how Yibaninati, was at the time a key tool in their alleged capture of Prasa’s multi-billion rand reconstruction of the vandalised Central Line in Cape Town.
Red flags
Our former national SAPS supply chain management source said there were strict regulations around appointing suppliers.
“When vetting suppliers there is a process where supply chain practitioners conduct due diligence…”
The source said information from a variety of sources was meant to be looked at, including publicly available information, and added that if it was found that someone had been arrested or was being investigated, especially for serious and violent crime, although not convicted, the supplier would be flagged.
“If a director of a company is sequestrated the company should not get a tender. It’s a problem, because how will the supplier render services if they don’t have money or are financially unfit? It is a red flag.”
In determining prices to be paid for diesel, the source said there were guidelines from National Treasury, with police having dedicated staff who conducted market analysis on goods.
“This is done at a national and provincial level by officers working in demand management sections whose job is to determine prices that are paid for suppliers. You cannot just pay whatever you like.”
When it comes to the selection of suppliers National Treasury’s rules are unequivocally clear.
What the law says
In an emailed response, National Treasury said that while suppliers may register on the CSD irrespective of their tax compliance status, supply chain management instructions required a supplier to be tax compliant at the time that a contract was awarded.
It said the CSD automatically verified a supplier’s tax compliance status in real time directly with SARS and made this information available to organs of state.
“Organs of state may not award contracts to suppliers that are not tax compliant.”
It added that where suppliers were non-tax compliant, “the information is reflected on the supplier’s CSD profile and registration report and is visible to organs of state during supplier selection and evaluation processes.
Treasury added that “responsibility for ensuring compliance at the award stage remains with the procuring institution”.
Inquiry
Western Cape police spokesperson Brigadier Novela Potelwa confirmed the “transactions” which she said were “preceded by a fair procurement process that considered other service providers listed on the CSD.
“The process culminated in the preferred service provider rendering a service over time to two police stations namely Lentegeur and Nyanga. Records further indicate the last transaction between Western Cape SAPS and the service provider was in January 2023.”
She said that on notification of concerns about the service provider in relation to its ownership, no further business transactions were conducted with it by the SAPS in the Western Cape.
Poletwa said not say what the concerns were or who raised them.
When amaBhungane questioned whether, given Johnson’s known notoriety, risk assessments had either not been done or ignored, Poletwa said: “Given the complexity of the questions raised and the allegations referred to in your correspondence, an inquiry has been initiated to establish the facts and determine the appropriate course of action, including whether the matter warrants a criminal investigation.”
National police spokesperson Colonel Athlenda Mathe, speaking on behalf of the academy which is administered by the SAPS national training department, said the “prescribed procurement process” was followed when it became necessary to procure fuel during periods of load shedding “to ensure the continuity of essential operations and keep the facility operational”.
“Importantly, at the time the procurement was undertaken, the academy had no knowledge or information indicating that the owners of the supplier were allegedly involved in any criminal activities. The procurement decision was therefore based on the prescribed process, the quotations received and the information available to the academy at that time.”
