Stefaans Brmmer
President Thabo Mbeki might have to tell a Cape court whether he met a mobster
The former commander of an elite police unit has testified in court that President Thabo Mbeki met Mafia kingpin Vito Palazzolo in 1997 to ”reassure him there was no investigation against him”.
Andr Lincoln, who led the now defunct presidential investigation task unit and is standing trial on nearly 50 corruption-related charges, told the Wynberg Regional Court on January 10 that he and the then-deputy president had both assured Palazzolo he was not under investigation so as ”to put him at ease”. This was to protect an investigation into Palazzolo that was in fact being conducted by Lincoln’s unit.
Lincoln’s bombshell testimony was not reported at the time, but the Mail & Guardian has obtained a copy of the court record, in which Lincoln repeatedly makes the claim. Presidential spokesperson Bheki Khumalo this week declined to comment, saying: ”We don’t wish to be drawn into the matter.”
Palazzolo on Thursday would not comment on the alleged meeting with Mbeki as the matter was ”sub judice”. But he said he had received a subpoena from presiding Magistrate AP Kotze this week to testify when Lincoln’s trial resumes on July 9. He said there were rumours Mbeki would also be subpoenaed.
The M&G has independently established that there is a chance a senior official likely Mbeki will be called to testify by the magistrate, who is keen to probe the veracity of Lincoln’s assertion.
Palazzolo, regarded by the FBI and the Italian police as an international Mafia kingpin, first arrived in South Africa in 1986 after absconding from a Swiss jail sentence imposed for his role in a notorious drug syndicate.
If it is established that Mbeki met Palazzolo even if it was to help shield Lincoln’s investigation into Palazzolo serious questions will need answering: Is it wise for a senior government official, under any circumstances, to meet with a known Mafia suspect? And, perhaps more seriously, would it have been wise to abet a lie which could, arguably, be used by the suspect to defend his credentials elsewhere?
It is understood the Democratic Alliance is keen to use the news of Mbeki’s alleged meeting with Palazzolo to help shield it from further embarrassment over the relationship between Gerald Morkel, the DA Cape Town mayor, and German fugitive Jurgen Harksen.
But Palazzolo is hardly an antidote: Tertius Delport, the DA justice representative and long a top lieutenant of party leader Tony Leon, became close to Palazzolo during NP rule, when Delport was a Cabinet minister.
Delport admitted in 1991 that he had secured jobs for Palazzolo’s sons. It was also reported he had offered Palazzolo-bashing investigative journalist Martin Welz R75 000 to write an authorised Palazzolo biography.
The presidential investigation task unit, led by Lincoln, a former African National Congress intelligence operative, started probing Palazzolo in mid-1996, possibly at Mbeki’s orders. The M&G reported in 1997 that Lincoln reported directly to Mbeki although Mbeki’s office denied it at the time. Lincoln’s bypassing of normal reporting procedures angered George Fivaz, the then-commissioner of police.
Starting in October 1997, the M&G ran a series of articles on the investigation by Lincoln’s unit into Palazzolo, and on a separate probe sanctioned by Fivaz into Lincoln and his unit. The current charges against Lincoln stem from that probe, which centred on allegations that Lincoln, while he was investigating Palazzolo, became too close to the mobster and defrauded the state in the process.
Included in the ”evidence” against Lincoln is a letter he wrote to Palazzolo’s lawyer in August 1997. In it he exonerates Palazzolo on a range of allegations made against him by Italian investigating authorities, who have been trying to have Palazzolo extradited. Lincoln’s letter ended: ”It has been a pleasure for me to assist your client … and I really hope that this letter contributes towards solving your client’s problems.”
In November last year Lincoln lodged charges with the police, claiming that senior National Intelligence Agency officers had offered him incentives, including financial, if he were to plead guilty to some charges and not fight them in court. Other charges would be dropped. In an affidavit, Lincoln claimed the intelligence officers wanted him to ”take the rap” and spare both Mbeki and Sydney Mufamadi, the former safety and security minister, embarrassment in his testimony.
A Ministry for Intelligence Services spokesperson this week commented: ”The matter is currently with the Department of Public Prosecutions who has to decide whether they will proceed with charges against the NIA members.”
Now, with news of Lincoln’s court testimony, it is clearer from what type of embarrassment the intelligence officers may have wanted to shield Mbeki, if indeed that is what they were trying to do.
The court record shows that on January 10, when state prosecutor Andr Bouwer cross-examined Lincoln on his letter exonerating Palazzolo, Lincoln maintained that Mbeki had sanctioned the letter to put Palazzolo at ease and shield the investigation.
Bouwer pointed out that Palazzolo could have used Lincoln’s written exoneration to protect him from the reach of Italian law, and asked whether Lincoln was inferring that Mbeki had agreed to ”lies being circulated to foreign countries”.
Lincoln answered: ”Most definitely the president knew about all the facts. And I can go further to say, your worship, that the president understood the need to protect this investigation, even later than this. Around November 1997, after the Mail & Guardian started exposing the investigation, I went together with Vito Palazzolo to the president’s office, where the president reassured him that there was no investigation against him.”
When Bouwer kept pushing Lincoln, saying Mbeki would ”never have allowed” such a lie to be propagated, and that ”nobody can be that stupid”, Lincoln persisted. ”I’m saying that I discussed this letter with the president before I drafted [it] and the [letter] that was drafted was as a result of the discussion between the president and myself as to how we are going to maintain the secrecy of this investigation.”
Lincoln repeatedly referred to the subsequent meeting at Tuynhuys, where Mbeki’s Cape Town offices were housed.