Legal Question in Criminal Law in South Africa

i would like to know. i am a private investigator and do investigations at companies were its suspected that employees are stealing from the company or from delivery vehicles. if my undercover agents posing as a client ask a employee for an item, and the employee indicates that he/she will take it and the client must pay him for it. either outside the company or inside and the employee removes it from the premises, will this be entrapment?


Asked on 2/24/14, 3:32 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Sam Jackson

No, the setting of a trap (as it were), where an opportunity is created for a person to commit an offense, is not unlawful (or what is commonly known as "entrapment"). The key requirement is that the target of the trap must be allowed to act freely and voluntarily.

Therefore, repeated and increasing pressure from the side of the agent to take part in the proposed scheme in the face of repeated refusals from the side of the target (for example where the offer to the target is made increasingly lucrative, until the target eventually relents), will be taking things too far.

If you need any further assistance and/or legal representation, please contact my colleague, Gys Niesing, at 084 593 2341, [email protected] or Skype: gysniesing.

Yours faithfully,

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Answered on 2/24/14, 11:17 pm


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