The investigation into playboy Paul Ekon’s alleged gold scam deepens. He is also said to have offered the ANC `tiny little guns’, reports Stefaans Brmmer
NEW details have emerged of gold syndicate suspect Paul Ekon’s association with African National Congress leaders – including his alleged loan of a handgun to Thabo Mbeki – but ANC leaders say Ekon’s largesse never influenced them.
Meanwhile, police this week said they would accept an offer from Ekon to open his Swiss banking records – an offer that Ekon told the Mail & Guardian would prove his innocence. Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi, replying to a question in Parliament last week, confirmed Ekon was under investigation by the police Diamond and Gold Branch and that the investigation would be completed “when all the relevant documents have been received from Switzerland”.
He said Ekon was being investigated for the “illegal possession” of R4,8-million in unwrought gold – a reference to a Johannesburg International Airport police raid in June last year, when 129kg of gold was confiscated.
In a subsequent Rand Supreme Court tussle over the legality of the raid, police disclosed in an affidavit that they believed the consignment was part of a syndicate racket in which five tons of gold – worth almost a quarter of a billion rands at present value – had been smuggled to Europe and Britain in a single year.
Ekon, who is now resident in London, last week said he had been out of the country for “six to nine months” at the time of the raid and could not have been in possession of the gold.
He said when there were rumours linking him to the “Chemfix” gold smuggling operation a number of years ago, he had offered to fly a South African police officer to Geneva and instruct Swiss authorities to hand over documentation to prove his innocence. He was repeating the same offer.
Police East Rand liaison officer Inspector Michelle Erasmus this week said the investigating officer “would very much like Ekon to be in touch. He will gladly accept the offer – Ekon just has to say where and when.”
Ekon, a flamboyant 37-year-old millionaire businessman, entered the public eye this year when axed deputy minister Bantu Holomisa named him as the host of Mbeki’s 50th birthday party in 1992 – claiming the party had been financed, through Ekon, by casino magnate Sol Kerzner.
The M&G has since learnt that Ekon cultivated extensive contacts in the ANC since the movement was unbanned in 1990 – to the consternation of some ANC members, who thought he was not to be trusted. Ekon socialised with ANC officials as senior as President Nelson Mandela, acted as a “fixer” in a number of ANC-sanctioned but failed black empowerment deals around the time of the 1994 elections and dispensed largesse to whomever would take it.
But perhaps the most divisive was his gift of handguns to a number of ANC members – confirmed to the M&G first by ANC insiders and later by Ekon himself. Ekon last week said he had offered “tiny little guns”, designed to be concealed easily, to a number of ANC leaders in the early 1990s – including Aziz Pahad (now Deputy Foreign Minister), Tokyo Sexwale (now Gauteng premier), and Chris Hani.
Ekon said Sexwale had accepted the offer, while Pahad had turned it down. Hani’s gun had been “paid up”, but he did not collect it and was assassinated two weeks later, in early 1993. He said he had lent his own handgun to Mbeki in about 1990, but that Mbeki lost it in a burglary – which got him (Ekon) into trouble with the authorities. “You don’t know how closely I was followed by the security police because I was friends with Thabo,” Ekon claimed.
Mbeki’s liaison officer Ricky Naidoo this week said Mbeki, on a visit to a number of European countries, could not be reached for comment.
But a senior ANC National Executive Committee member told the M&G that, while the ANC had problems safeguarding leaders after their return from exile, there was a feeling that offers like Ekon’s should not be accepted. The organisation already had enough problems with “unaccountable guns”.
He had the impression Ekon was attempting to “compromise” the country’s leaders-to-be so that he could call in the favours after the elections.
And he confirmed ANC Department of Intelligence and Security members had done a background check on Ekon in the run-up to the 1994 elections. “He was not checkable, and we were not happy with it. We could prove nothing against him, but we needed to be able to trust him.”
Mufamadi this week denied Ekon had been in “regular contact” with him to discuss a possible amnesty, as claimed in a Sunday newspaper. “I am not an attorney general. I cannot give assurances that he will not be prosecuted.”
Mufamadi said he had not seen Ekon in “perhaps more than two years”, and that Ekon contacted him only once, a month or two ago, complaining that police appeared to be implicating him in the gold racket. Mufamadi said Ekon suggested “a certain police officer” could attest to his innocence. “I met with this man [the police officer]. He said to me, `Minister, don’t believe what the investigating officer is saying about Paul Ekon.'”
Mufamadi said he could not preclude either version, but that he would leave the investigation to the police. “If I were Paul Ekon, if I was convinced I’m not involved, I’d fly back and announce publicly that I’m here.”
He said he could not remember anyone warning him of an ANC background check on Ekon before the elections, but that during the struggle and in the run-up to the elections the organisation needed help from all types.
A political commentator, who knew both Ekon and ANC leaders at the time, said this week: “If the question is whether he was a serious player or a useful groupie, I’d say it was pretty much the latter.”
He said he suspected it was a “naive period” for the ANC, when it easily trusted anyone offering help.