Gold smuggling suspect Paul Ekon, once close to top African National Congress leaders, has written to ANC national chair Jacob Zuma asking for the contents of a report in which the organisation’s intelligence wing allegedly warned leaders to steer clear of Ekon.
Dated January 13 and leaked to the Mail & Guardian soon after, the letter confirms links Ekon had with ANC leaders before and after the elections in 1994.
In November, Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi confirmed in Parliament that Ekon, who lives in London, was under police scrutiny for his alleged involvement in a consignment of R4,8-million in unwrought gold, seized at Johannesburg International Airport in June 1995.
In the letter, Ekon says: “I found that when the ANC first moved into Shell House [its headquarters] they were highly disorganised and were in need of many, many services. I tried my best! … I have never nor will I ever ask for anything. I was very worried about the security of a lot of the members of the ANC and hence offered them guns. I also helped with flights, arranged phones, assisted with fund-raising and tried to assist in whatever else they needed.”
Later, Ekon says: “I feel as if I have been betrayed by the people I tried to help.”
The M&G reported last September on Ekon’s R500 000 defamation suit — later withdrawn — against former ANC political prisoner Peter-Paul Ngwenya.
In court papers Ekon claimed Ngwenya had told Swedish investors in an ANC-supported “black-empowerment” television consortium that Ekon “is a drug dealer; worked with [former security police chief] Basie Smit with a hit squad; and was associated with the Robert Smit murders”. The deal in which Ngwenya, Ekon and Dali Tambo, among others, were partners, never got off the ground.
The M&G learnt at the time that information given to the Swedish investors had allegedly originated with a background check the ANC department of intelligence and security had done on Ekon, and that the result of this check had been a warning to ANC leaders to stay “at an arm’s length from Ekon”.
In his letter Ekon asks Zuma, who is the ANC’s former intelligence head: “Jacob, please can you let me know if in fact a secret report was done and the contents thereof as [these] drugs/hit squad allegations have really affected me and I am desperate to clear my name. I am not perturbed about the other allegations that the press are making as I believe those will be cleared by the ongoing police investigation.”