/ 10 November 2006

Inside the Selebi dossier

The “Selebi dossier”, made public this week, is a fascinating chronicle of Paul O’Sullivan’s relentless pursuit of his own case against Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi that has taken him to the heart of a Scorpions probe of the country’s top cop.

The Mail & Guardian has for some time been in possession of similar information, but has refrained from making it public for fear of jeopardising investigations and endangering witnesses.

O’Sullivan released the dossier to the media after some details were published in the Sunday Times, leading Selebi, at a Sunday press conference, to name O’Sullivan as the man behind the “smear campaign” against him.

O’Sullivan’s dossier reveals that there is much more than a smear campaign against Selebi — it provides backing for previous reports by the M&G indicating there is a serious Scorpions investigation of Selebi.

It also shows how O’Sullivan came to play a pivotal role in this investigation — leading him to be intensely scrutinised by Selebi’s office.

The dossier sets out the genesis of O’Sullivan’s conflict with Selebi, which emerged out of a 2001 decision by O’Sullivan — then head of security for the Airports Company South Africa (Acsa) — to terminate the lucrative contract of the company providing security at Johannesburg International Airport.

O’Sullivan believes that Selebi intervened to try to protect the company — Khuselani Security — and, ultimately, manoeuvred for the police to take charge of security at the country’s airports. O’Sullivan’s resistance to these moves, led, he believes, to attempts on his life and to his dismissal from ACSA and finally launched him on a private quest to probe Selebi’s activities.

That quest has now had dramatic public consequences that have seen Selebi having to deny reports that he received R50 000 from the shadowy Clinton Nassif, who was recently accused of fraud, and to downplay his friendship with Glenn “the Landlord” Agliotti — both of whom are being investigated by the Scorpions as part of a massive probe into crimes ranging from murder to drug-smuggling and money-laundering.

O’Sullivan’s actions have also played a part in exposing what appears to be an all-out war between the Scorpions, the country’s elite crime fighting unit, on the one hand, and Selebi and those loyal to him on the other.

Recently Selebi’s spin machine has launched what amounts to a “counter­-smear” campaign, threatening the arrest of top Scorpions, including Directorate of Special Operations boss Leonard McCarthy and the man leading the Selebi investigation,

Scorpions Gauteng head Gerrie Nel. Up to now no evidence has been provided for the basis of such a threat.

In the dossier, which is addressed to Andrew Leask, head of national projects for the Scorpions, O’Sullivan reveals that frustration with a lack of progress in the investigation of a complaint against Selebi — laid with the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) — led him to pursue his own probe.

The ICD this week said there was no substance to O’Sullivan’s claims, but a comparison of the ICD reports and details in O’Sullivan’s dossier suggest the police watchdog conducted only a cursory investigation.

In a statement prepared in case of his own sudden death, O’Sullivan writes: “In or about September 2005, a certain Brett Kebble was murdered and, as a result of that murder and certain information that came to my attention … I was able to ascertain that there were solid links between a certain Norbert Glenn Agliotti as well as a certain Clinton Ronald Nassif and the Commissioner of Police, Jackie Selebi. The clear indication coming out from these various statements … is that Selebi, together with others, was clearly engaged in unlawful activities, namely racketeering.”

Selebi has denied such claims, stating that his hands are clean, but he has refused to answer any further specific questions from the M&G. He has indicated he is considering legal action against O’Sullivan.

O’Sullivan reveals that he then met with senior Scorpions investigator Herbie Heap, and later with Robyn Plitt, who was leading Project K, the investigation of the disappearance of hundreds of millions of rands from Kebble’s JCI empire.

Remarkably, O’Sullivan, who has a security background and is a seasoned investigator, was able to secure access to two people right in the heart of the network the Scorpions were investigating.

One was Anthony Dormehl, owner of a transport business that had allegedly done a lot of work for Agliotti in moving around tobacco, alcohol and drugs, some of which had been seized by Palto, the semi-official undercover crime intelligence operation that has come to be closely associated with Selebi. Dormehl became a state witness and was able to provide information that led to the seizure of R200-million worth of hashish and dagga and the arrest of an associate of Agliotti.

The other key witness secured by O’Sullivan was a confidential source (dubbed C/S) right inside the Nassif empire, whose name is known to the M&G. The source reports obtained by O’Sullivan from this witness include dramatic claims about payments to Selebi, drug dealing and money laundering.

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