Ngakaagae hits back at “ungrateful and entitled” DIS officers
Innocent Selatlhwa | Monday April 20, 2026 06:00
In a detailed written response to the DIS staff accusation the Director General Peter Magosi of attempting an unlawful P1.5 million deduction from their salaries, Ngakaagae painted a picture of a four-year legal battle fought largely on charity and a moral decision to slash his fees by 90%.
The dispute centres on a court order that required DIS to pay settlement monies into the trust account of Ngakaagae and Company. When the spy agency erroneously paid the officers directly, it left the law firm with unrecovered costs. The DIS subsequently agreed to pay the firm an equivalent sum and recover it from staff salaries, a move the officers have since challenged as an unlawful intrusion into a private attorney-client relationship.
However, Ngakaagae, has set out a chronology of events that he argues entirely justifies the deduction and exposes a 'false sense of entitlement' among the intelligence operatives.
According to Ngakaagae, the matter began five years ago when he received instructions from 132 members of the DIS regarding their conditions of service. These were officers absorbed into the DIS from what was previously known as government security.
'Each had a personal claim based on their positions and length of service, they were bound together by the fact that they were all victims of a misapplication of principle. As such we joined them in the same action,' Ngakaagae explained.
The case was filed before the High Court with each officer appearing in the case citation as a litigant in their own right. The matter initially came before Acting Judge Khan, who remitted it to the Intelligence and Security Services Tribunal. The legal tussle would drag on for four years, spanning both the High Court and the specialised tribunal.
At the conclusion of the matter, DIS, represented by Bogopa Manewe and Company admitted liability. A settlement agreement was reached, and a court order was issued stipulating precisely how the payments were to be handled.
'The DIS were ordered to pay the officers in terms of their claim. They were required to calculate their claims individually and to remit the payments to the trust account of Ngakaagae & Co. This was to enable Ngakaagae & Co to verify the amounts and to deduct its costs, a position agreed with the clients,” Ngakaagae stated.
That court order, however, was not followed. The DIS paid the settlement sums directly into the personal bank accounts of the officers, bypassing the law firm's trust account entirely.
'DIS did not follow the court order. Instead, they paid the amounts directly to the officers in neglect of the court order. Ngakaagae & Co queried the act with DIS, who admitted the error,” he said.
Faced with the fact that the money had already been dispersed, with the exception of six officers, the DIS proposed a solution. Given that the error was the Directorate's, Ngakaagae and Company could not be expected to chase down 132 individual security officers for its fees.
'Since the money had already been paid to officers, to the exception of six officers, DIS undertook to pay the money for the six remaining to Ngakaagae & Co and to remit a sum equivalent to the unrecovered legal costs of Ngakaagae & Co. They would then recover the same from their employees,' Ngakaagae revealed.
Ngakaagae said it was on this basis that Ngakaagae and Company submitted its outstanding bill, which totalled approximately P1.1 million.
Crucially, Ngakaagae has disclosed that this P1.1 million figure was not the full commercial rate for the work done. He argued that had each officer been billed individually for four years of litigation, the fees would have been astronomical.
'In calculating the costs Ngakaagae & Co determined that each litigant would, if charged individually, pay in excess of P100,000.00 which was far in excess of individual payments which ranged between P40,000 and P60,000,' he explained.
He described this as a moral crossroads. He said many of the officers had pleaded poverty at the outset of the case. Over the four-year period, Ngakaagae said the firm had received only around P130,000 in personal contributions from the 132 clients combined.
'All 132 officers had pleaded they had no money and Ngakaagae & Co had only been paid around P130,000 being personal contributions from the 132 officers. This was accepted out of understanding as they had indicated they did not have money. Given their circumstances and the clear injustice, it would not have been morally right to turn them away,' Ngakaagae said.
Instead of billing the full commercial rate, he said the firm made a decision to effectively waive 90% of the fees. “The roughly P130,000 already paid was divided among all 132 litigants and deducted from their individual discounted bills. The result is that each individual paid around P11,000 for four years of legal services,' Ngakaagae stated.
Ngakaagae also addressed the officers' claim that they had already paid their fees in full. He suggested the officers were operating under a flawed logic, believing that paying one person's bill covered all 132 members. 'That was never the agreement and would not make business sense,' he said.
He did, however, concede to a minor oversight during the final reconciliation of accounts. Years after the remittance, officers approached the firm claiming a remaining balance. An investigation revealed that an amount of roughly P45,000 had been overlooked during the reconciliation process.
'It was discovered that during reconciliation of the account an amount of about P45,000 had been overlooked which would have reduced each officer's liability by around P400,' Ngakaagae confirmed, adding that the amount was paid to their chosen lawyer's account in whole.
Ngakaagae did not hold back in his assessment of the officers' current stance. He argued that their complaint essentially boils down to a belief that four years of complex legal representation across two judicial bodies is only worth around P1,000 per person, a position he finds untenable.
'The officers claim they had paid. Using their logic each one of them was entitled to pay only around P1,000 to Ngakaagae & Co for four years of legal services spanning the High Court and the intelligence tribunal. They see themselves as a corporate entity which they are not. Their case is that by paying one person's bill that sufficed for 132 officers. In other words, all 132 of them should be accommodated under one person's bill,' Ngakaagae said.
He concluded with a sharp rebuke of their characterisation of events. 'Neither Ngakaagae & Co nor the DIS did anything wrong on this score. The officers are an ungrateful lot with a false sense of entitlement. They were carried with understanding through many years of abject despair and despondency and treated with even greater charity in the end.'
According to Ngakaagae, each officer now enjoys a financial benefit worth tens of thousands of Pula, secured by the very legal team they are now fighting. 'Each of them now believes that the service they sought in tears and received, which earned them tens of thousands individually, is worth P1,000 in legal fees,' he said.
Meanwhile the DIS officers are still pursuing more money as the amount paid was not as per consent order that was used to pay them. The DIS on the other hand is of the view that the initial calculations of P10.2 Million was inaccurate stating that the P7.4 Million disbursed was the right amount.