The friend was Alain Guenon, a controversial and mysterious French businessman. Lubowski phoned Guenon in New York to express his fears and ask him to return quickly to help him. One theory being circulated regarding Lubowski’s death, and sourced to Guenon, has him meeting with an international underworld cartel in Switzerland in early 1989. . He agrees, at a price, to arrange that after Namibia becomes independent casino rights would be granted to these underworld figures.
Returning to Namibia, Lubowski fails to deliver and is unable to return the ”advance” paid to him. As a result, he is gunned down outside his Windhoek home in August. In this scenario agents of the controversial and secret military unit CCB are hired simply because they were willing to operate in the underworld. Guenon has featured recently in allegations that he had befriended Winnie Mandela in a bid to control media access to her husband after his release from prison. The Frenchman has strong SADF connections, having made a film for them.
The Weekly Mail reported last month that Guenon ran a news agency called Adage which had all the characteristics of a front company. It has no clients, produces no discernible product, yet its French records show large amounts of money passing through its books. It is believed that Guenon’s name will feature prominently in the evidence promised by Defence Minister Magnus Malan to prove Lubowski’s alleged involvement in South African military intelligence structures.
It is known that Guenon was close to Lubowski and stayed at his Windhoek home while in Namibia Malan claimed in parliament this week that there was a witch hunt in progress against the South African Defence Force. If so, it is only because it has become plain over the last few months that evil forces do lurk within its ranks. As more is revealed concerning the CCB it becomes increasingly clear that there were few, if any, controls over its members, who have been linked to drug-dealing and other underworld dealings.
The Weekly Mail knows of mercenary and privateer hitmen associated with CCB members, and there are strong allegations that certain CCB members on occasion contracted themselves out to do the dirty work for well-known underworld characters. The CCB was far from the tight and disciplined network of cells which has been projected so far. It appears to have been more a loose collection of overlapping death units with inter¬ changeable personnel, as much underworld as military, as much out for personal gain as for the supposed good of the country. A remarkable feature of the whole death squad saga, both where it has affected the police and where it has touched the military, has been the ubiquity of criminal activity.
”Staal” Burger, Abram ”Slang” van Zyl and Ferdi Barnard, all of whom have been linked to both the CCB and the Lubowski killing, were recruited by Military Intelligence while they were under suspicion for criminal activity. Burger and Van Zyl resigned from the Brixton Murder and Robbery Squad to avoid criminal charges after a departmental investigation. Drug dealing and underworld murders were involved.
Former Brixton Murder and Robbery sergeant Barnard was tried and convicted of common murder. Similarly, former security police captain Dirk Coetzee was found by a departmental investigation to have been involved in various criminal activities (including drug-dealing and diamond- smuggling) long before be was finally discharged.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
