SOUTH Africa’s Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has obtained an order from the Special Tribunal preserving two multimillion-rand properties belonging to former Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) Group Chief Executive Officer Lucky Montana, reigniting a decade-long battle between the state and one of South African rail’s most contested former executives.
The order, granted on an interim basis, bars Montana from selling, transferring, leasing or otherwise encumbering a Hurlingham, Johannesburg property bought for R13.5 million, and a Waterkloof, Pretoria property bought for R2.25 million, pending the outcome of civil recovery proceedings. The Tribunal has also directed the Registrar of Deeds to endorse both title deeds with caveats.
According to the SIU, both acquisitions trace back to PRASA’s Integrated Security Access Management System (ISAMS) contract, awarded to Siyangena Technologies, a subsidiary of TMM Holdings, originally as a 2010 FIFA World Cup station-security pilot. What began as a limited upgrade programme expanded, over four contracts and extensions, into a R5.6 billion commitment by April 2016 — nearly triple the value of the R1.96 billion first phase awarded in April 2011.
The SIU’s investigators say Montana’s declared income cannot account for either purchase, and that bank records instead show a chain of payments running from Siyangena and TMM Holdings through intermediary entities — Precise Trade and Invest 02 and the Botswana-registered Midtownbrace — before reaching the conveyancing attorneys who finalised both transfers. The director of Precise Trade and Invest, the SIU notes, was also the attorney representing the TMM group.
For the Waterkloof property, the unit says R1.85 million from ESS (Pty) Ltd, part of the TMM stable, and R4 million from TMM Holdings landed in Precise Trade and Invest’s account in June 2014, days before R2.25 million moved to the transferring attorneys. The Hurlingham acquisition, the SIU alleges, followed a longer route in 2015 – from Siyangena to TMM Holdings, on to Midtownbrace, and finally to the attorneys who registered the R13.5 million property in Montana’s name. The house that stood on the Hurlingham plot has since been demolished.
It bears stressing, as the SIU’s own statement acknowledges, that this remains an interim measure: respondents have been called to appear before the Tribunal on 11 August 2026 to argue why the order should not be made final, and the SIU has been directed to institute its main civil case within 30 days. No court has yet made any finding of wrongdoing against Montana, who denies the allegations in full.
“So, the SIU obtained a provisional order to initiate legal action against me, but has not obtained a Preservation Order. As the word says PROVISIONAL!”
Tshepo Lucky Montana
MONTANA HITS BACK
Montana responded within hours on X, rejecting the SIU’s framing outright and accusing the unit of misleading the public.
“The SIU has become desperate,” he wrote, insisting that what the unit obtained was a provisional order initiating legal proceedings – not, in his telling, the final preservation order the SIU’s statement describes. He said he was served papers around 9 July 2026, filed his notice to oppose the following Thursday, and that his opposing affidavit is due by 19 August 2026 under the Uniform Rules of Court – a timeline he likened to an earlier sequestration bid brought against him by the South African Revenue Service.
He questioned why the SIU chose a Sunday, which he described as “a holy day for many Christians,” to publicise the order, and framed the action as the latest episode in what he called a coordinated, years-long campaign against him by organs of state. Montana traced this back to a 2016 complaint by the “now-discredited” Paul O’Sullivan, alleged interference by forensic investigators linked to the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI), a tax debt pursued by SARS that he called fictional, and a recent attempt, which he said occurred in June 2026, to have PRASA lay a false theft charge against him. He linked the pressure to his refusal, while at PRASA, to allow government ministers and senior ANC figures a stake in the R53 billion Gibela new-train contract.
“The SIU and other organs of state continue to dream of the day they will feed on the carcass of Lucky Montana. But this will not happen, not in this lifetime,” Montana wrote. “I wish the SIU all the best in this latest attempt, but they will not get any of my houses.”
A CONTRACT UNDER SCRUTINY SINCE 2010
The ISAMS saga sits inside the SIU’s wider Proclamation R.153 of 2024 mandate, which authorises investigation of PRASA maladministration and corruption between January 2010 and February 2024 – a sweep covering the agency’s most turbulent decade, through repeated leadership changes, a stalled rolling-stock renewal programme, and years of parliamentary and Auditor-General findings on irregular expenditure. Montana led PRASA between 2011 and 2015, at the height of the ISAMS contract’s expansion.
SIU spokesperson Selby Makgotho said the unit “welcomes the Tribunal order” and regards it as “an important step in safeguarding assets pending the finalisation of civil recovery proceedings,” adding that any evidence of criminal conduct uncovered would be referred to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) for consideration and further action.
The immediate legal question is narrower than either side’s public messaging suggests: whether the interim order survives the 11 August return date, and whether the SIU’s main civil case — due within 30 days of the order – can substantiate the money trail it has outlined. Montana’s opposing affidavit, due 19 August, will be the first formal test of his version of events inside the Tribunal itself, rather than on social media.
For a rail agency still working to shake off a reputation shaped by years of asset-stripping allegations, non-functional stations and abandoned procurement processes, the outcome will matter well beyond one former executive’s two houses. It will signal whether the state’s civil-recovery architecture – built through the Special Tribunal since 2019 – can convert detailed forensic paper trails into assets actually returned to the public purse, or whether, as Montana insists, this is one more chapter in a pattern of pursuit without conviction.
