Heath in cop ‘front’ row

Police in the third week of March denied claims being investigated by former judge Willem Heath that a little-known VIP-protection firm is a ‘front company” — but did not deny a relationship with its members.

Heath, the former head of the corruption-busting special investigation unit and now a private consultant, told the Mail & Guardian he had received new allegations, including from within the South African Police Service (SAPS), ‘confirming recent contact” between the firm, Palto, and police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi.

Heath said he was investigating the likelihood that Palto was not merely a private company doing some work for the SAPS, but in fact ‘a police company”. He said he had ‘two very reliable witnesses”.

Heath first went public with the claims — which, if true, suggest the police has not shed all of its apartheid-era tricks — in Rapport on Sunday March 16.

The newspaper claimed links between Palto and the SAPS on the one hand, and between Palto and controversial private investigations firm Associated Intelligence Network (AIN) on the other.

The newspaper said Selebi and Palto had, among other things, discussed a multimillion-rand contract for Palto and AIN to train police in Sudan. It also recorded Selebi’s denial that he knew of Palto’s existence.

Selebi was not available to answer questions from the M&G, but crime intelligence head Commissioner Ray Lalla, slamming what he called ‘medieval conspiracies”, this week said: ‘The SAPS does not have any covert private security company called Palto and it is not our policy to have a private police front company.”

Lalla also denied any contractual agreement with Palto, but left open the possibility that there was an individual relationship with Palto members. ‘Our policy is that we can have individuals as sources, and that’s it.”

Heath’s interest in Palto is an extension of an investigation he is conducting into AIN and its allegedly irregular collaboration with police. AIN is known to employ former SAPS personnel and has been accused of exploiting the ‘inside track” this affords it.

Heath was contracted to do the investigation by mining magnates Brett and Roger Kebble after Roger Kebble was arrested in November on fraud charges brought by Durban Roodepoort Deep, the gold mining firm from which he was earlier ousted as executive chairperson.

Roger Kebble claimed at the time that the mining firm had employed AIN ‘to conduct a campaign against me”. He wrote to Selebi claiming AIN had illegally drawn or tried to draw confidential information such as his cellphone and banking records.

AIN has denied it uses illegal means to access information. AIN boss Warren Goldblatt in the third week of March confirmed the relationship between AIN and Palto, and also that Palto had gone to Selebi to discuss the Sudan contract. He also said Palto had been ‘responsible for successful busts on behalf of the police”.

Goldblatt said Palto was primarily a VIP protection company, and that if Palto’s clients wanted investigative work, ‘we’ll do it on their behalf”. When the possibility came up of a contract with the Sudanese police to train it in VIP protection, ‘we accompanied them on a fact-finding mission” to Sudan. The idea, he said, was for Palto to subcontract part of the job to AIN.

And Goldblatt confirmed that Palto had discussed the matter with Selebi in advance — to make sure, he said, that they did not fall foul of the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act, which controls the transfer of military skills beyond South Africa’s borders. The contract was awaiting Sudanese government approval, he said.

Palto head Paul Stemmet had a somewhat different take. He said Palto had decided the Sudan contract was ‘definitely not on; it is not pertinent to what we do”.

He said there was ‘no truth” in the allegation that Palto was a police front, saying it was a VIP protection company staffed by ‘six or seven guys”, some of whom were former members of the elite police Special Task Force.

Stemmet said his own experience was as an army artilleryman. He confirmed his firm met Selebi before it sent a fact-finding mission to Sudan, but denied the meeting had anything to do with the foreign military assistance law. ‘Basically it was more of a thing of courtesy … and so that they know what we’re doing.”

Stemmet said: ‘We do not want to step on clients’ toes.” Asked whether this confirmed the SAPS was a Palto client, he said: ‘That is the prerogative of the SAPS to disclose.”

Asked about ‘busts” which Palto was said to have done for the police, Stemmet claimed Palto members, who were also police reservists, had done that ‘in their private time” and that it had nothing to do with Palto.