In 2008, British journalist Misha Glenny published a ground-breaking work detailing the exponential growth and globalisation of organised crime – fuelled by the chaotic disintegration of communism in the former Soviet empire – which he dubbed “McMafia”.
Glenny made the point that the enormous sums of money at the disposal of criminal syndicates, amounting to perhaps 20% of the world economy, gave it the potent capacity to corrupt government officials. “In recent years, we have seen several such cases in which ministers and heads of national law enforcement agencies have been implicated in drug-related corruption. We are also witnessing more and more acts of violence, conflicts and terrorist activities fuelled by drug trafficking and organised crime,” he wrote.
Drugs are central to this global criminal enterprise. A report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2011 noted that, between 1998 and 2009, world opium production rose by almost 80%, and the estimated value of the European cocaine market was $33-billion (about R330-billion).
In the past 10 years, McMafia has made its appearance in South Africa: mobsters and fugitives from justice, often from Eastern Europe, drawn by our weak and corruptible law enforcement system and constitutional guarantees that offer easy entry and asylum, which can be endlessly exploited to stall attempts to extradite and prosecute. The flagrant character of their crimes is matched by the apparent impotence of the authorities to bring them to book.
Radovan Krejcir arrived in South Africa six years ago on a false passport, trailing convictions for a string of crimes in his native Czech Republic, which has applied for his extradition. He is associated with known underworld figures such as murdered Cape Flats gang boss Cyril Beeka, and has faced charges in the South African courts of armed robbery, fraud and money laundering. His offices in Bedfordview have been bombed and he survived a bizarre attempt on his life earlier this year. On top of that, at least 10 people linked to him, some of them allegedly associated with the drugs trade, have died in apparent “hits”.
Yet the months pass and the legal processes surrounding him appear to go nowhere. Only the revenue service, which last week won a court order placing all his assets under curatorship, seems to have him seriously in its sights.
How is one to understand the paralysis of the police over such a protracted period? Should the authorities not have declared him persona non grata? What is one to make of the magistrate’s acceptance, in his extradition hearing, of Krejcir’s highly implausible claim to be a victim of political persecution in his home country?
We know that Krejcir’s wife, Katerina Krejcirova, was intending to go into business with the wife of senior crime intelligence officer Joey Mabasa. The Mail & Guardian’s front-page story in this week’s edition perhaps sheds a little more light on how Krejcir may have attempted to get close to, and manipulate, South Africa’s law enforcers.