This week the Mail & Guardian reveals National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi’s links to shadowy figures associated with slain businessman Brett Kebble.
Our investigation, which began before Kebble’s death, has revealed a web of relationships connecting Selebi to Clinton Nassif, a Kebble security operative, and Glenn Agliotti, who worked with Kebble on a series of hush-hush projects. Both have attracted the attention of authorities in the course of the latter’s broader investigations into smuggling networks involved in a variety of contraband.
A wide-ranging fraud investigation by the Scorpions into Kebble’s business empire appears to be probing the same links. On Thursday, the Scorpions threatened an interdict against the M&G, saying they would stop publication of the paper if we reported that they were investigating Selebi.
Exclusive
Calls made by Kebble in the hours before his death provide a fascinating window on the company he kept. On Friday, the M&G will reveal cellphone records from the last two days of Brett Kebble’s life that paint a fascinating, if incomplete, picture of his final movements and conversations.
Among the people he spoke to were Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad, his business partner Sello Rasethaba, Nassif, Agliotti and prominent African National Congress Youth League member Lunga Ngwana.
The cellphone data is not only seen as crucial evidence in the murder investigation. Calls and messages that arrived after his death are shot through with terrible pathos, an electronic afterlife for a man who lived hard.
Debts
In April this year, the M&G reported that Kebble’s expensive lifestyle was all paid for by others.
Investigators wading through the mind-bogglingly complex paper trail left by Kebble were unable to account for R900-million. About R400-million appeared to have been stolen from Randgold & Exploration (R&E), and another R500-million from JCI, two companies controlled by Kebble before he was given his marching orders in August last year.
This excludes the R1,1-billion being claimed by R&E against JCI in respect mainly of Randgold Resources shares illegally sold by Kebble to bankroll his crumbling empire. This claim has now gone to mediation.
Kebble was fired from his executive positions at R&E, JCI and Western Areas in August 2005, just a month before he was murdered in suspicious circumstances in Johannesburg.
The battle to recover millions of rands sucked out of companies controlled by the late Brett Kebble has intensified with the launch of the first legal action against a former director — and the involvement of the Scorpions in a criminal probe.
Deals
Earlier in April, the M&G reported that R&E had launched a sequestration application against former JCI Group “investor relations manager” George Poole — allegedly a key agent for Kebble in various scams to siphon off company assets.
The legal papers provided the first official evidence of how the politically powerful benefited from funds looted from JCI coffers as Kebble and his cronies sought to buy influence and protection.
Thrust into the limelight was former North West premier Popo Molefe, whose Lereko group had just concluded a R224-million empowerment deal with forestry company Sappi.
According to the sequestration application, Molefe received R600 000 from one of the front companies set up by Kebble and Poole. The shelf company, Tuscan Mood 1224, was allegedly used to launder the proceeds of more than R125-million in assets stolen from the JCI group.
Molefe, after consultation with his lawyers, told the M&G: “I cannot comment on the said matter.”
Also revealed was that Kebble, via Poole, paid about R4-million towards the cost of the African National Congress Youth League national conference in 2004, allegedly using cash derived from misappropriated shares.
Two of the key empowerment companies embroiled in the massive theft from Kebble’s JCI and R&A companies have since hit back at suggestions that they were party to the alleged fraud. Instead they claim they were duped by Kebble, in what has now emerged as a “simulated transaction”, allegedly based on forged documentation.
Itsuseng Strategic Investments, chaired by Andile Nkuhlu, and Equitant Trading, led by Lunga Ncwana and Songezo Mjongile, were among companies targeted by Randgold in secret liquidation applications aimed at recovering assets stripped out of the company during Kebble’s reign.