Jackie Selebi hits back

President Thabo Mbeki’s attack on the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the fight-back campaign by Jackie Selebi are threatening to derail the Scorpions’ investigation of the police national commissioner and his alleged links with organised crime.

Mbeki suspended NPA head Vusi Pikoli three weeks ago and has appointed former parliamentary speaker Frene Ginwala to investigate his fitness for the job. This came after the Scorpions, a division of the NPA, had obtained warrants to arrest Selebi and search his premises.

Project ‘Bad Guys”, the ­Scorpions’ investigation into the organised crime networks surrounding mining boss Brett Kebble, rests in part on the high-stakes prosecutorial gamble of cutting deals with perpetrators in exchange for their testimony against more important suspects, in a domino effect. As reported by the Mail & Guardian last year, Selebi was the ultimate target.

This week, however, Kebble murder accused Glenn Agliotti appeared to be retreating from a deal he had been negotiating with the Scorpions since his arrest late last year. Agliotti, Selebi’s longtime friend, was seen as the final domino that would down the police chief.

A source close to the Scorpions ‘Bad Guys” team claimed Agliotti’s change of heart came as a result of pressure on the Scorpions and the fact that Selebi appeared untouchable. He said Agliotti had told a former associate that he had received a message from inside the police that the Scorpions were being ‘dealt with”, and that it would not be in his interests to cooperate with them.

Agliotti had made ‘one hell of an affidavit” for the Scorpions in their ‘Bad Guys” investigation, one of his associates told the M&G. This is believed to contain details of alleged payments Agliotti routed to Selebi, which underpinned the Scorpions’ successful ­application last month for the warrants against Selebi.

The charges investigated against Selebi include corruption, fraud, racketeering and defeating the ends of justice. Pikoli’s suspension prevented the warrants being executed while his acting replacement, Mokotedi Mpshe, reviews the matter.

If Agliotti retreats from the deal, recanting his affidavit, the Scorpions will be left scrambling for alternatives.

The Scorpions’ predicament explains the unexpected addition on Tuesday of crime boss Clinton Nassif as a fifth accused in the ‘Paparas” drugs trial in Germiston.

That trial, also the fruit of the ‘Bad Guys” investigation, was instantly postponed on Tuesday so that a plea bargain between Nassif and the Scorpions could be finalised. Stefanos and Dimitrio Paparas, Stanley Poonin and Agliotti are the other accused.

Legal and investigative sources involved with the Paparas matter said Nassif had been offered a seven-year sentence, fully suspended for three years, in exchange for a guilty plea and his testimony.

These sources, and the source close to the Scorpions team, said the Scorpions’ strategy was to force Agliotti back into the fold. ‘The strategy is to get Agliotti to honour his affidavit and testify against Selebi,” said one.

Nassif is himself implicated in the Kebble murder and had a longstanding association with Agliotti. He is understood to be in a position to make certain allegations against Selebi himself, but not at Agliotti’s level.

Nassif, his lawyers and Scorpions investigators were finalising a detailed statement on Nassif’s knowledge of the Kebble murder and Paparas matter on Thursday. His plea agreement on the latter was expected to be presented to the Germiston Regional Court on Friday. This could place explosive information in the public domain.

Agliotti told the Star this week: ‘I can categorically state there are no deals.”

Asked by the M&G whether this referred only to the Paparas matter or the wider ‘Bad Guys” investigation, Agliotti referred questions to his advocate, Laurence Hodes. Hodes told the M&G: ‘You can’t repudiate something that doesn’t exist.”

Pressed on whether Agliotti’s public comment reflected a breakdown in his formerly cooperative stance, Hodes said: ‘I can’t comment.”

NPA spokesperson Tlali Tlali also refused to comment, saying to do so would be ‘wholly inappropriate”.

Underscoring the cooling of relations between the Scorpions and Agliotti, an associate of Agliotti’s told the M&G this week that his house arrest — a deal agreed with the NPA after he was taken into custody last year — had been tightened. ‘Until then he was seen on golf courses, at restaurants. It was house arrest in name only.”

His new stance, and the Scorpions’ counter-move with Nassif, comes against the backdrop of increasing pressure on the Scorpions over their investigative methods, and particularly their use of the domino strategy.

The terms of reference Mbeki set for Ginwala in her probe of Pikoli specifically asks whether indemnities and plea bargains were appropriately granted. This puts pressure on Mpshe, limiting his ability to pursue the same strategy.

The attack on the domino ­strategy was buttressed this week from quarters close to Selebi. Talk Radio 702 revealed that top detective Piet ­Byleveld was aggressively investigating allegations against other key witnesses in the Scorpions fold: the men alleged to have been the foot soldiers in the Kebble killing.

Mikey Schultz, Nigel McGurk and Faizal Smith reached indemnity agreements with the Scorpions last year in return for their testimony. However, Byleveld now plans to arrest Schultz for a string of other murders as part of his investigation of Johannesburg’s ‘bouncer” underworld.

‘There is a new hastiness in Byle­veld’s investigation,” a source familiar with the investigation told the M&G this week. It was also alleged that possible witnesses against Schultz and his associates are ‘being threatened in a hard-handed way” to obtain evidence against them.

A number of security sector sources have questioned the timing of Selebi’s high-profile promotion of Byleveld on September 27. ­Byleveld skipped a rank. On the same day, it was revealed that the Randburg Magistrate’s Court had issued an arrest warrant for Selebi.

‘One must ask why Byleveld is now suddenly promoted to director level. From 2003 his colleagues in the SAPS and the NPA have been asking for a promotion,” a justice department source said this week.

The SAPS this week vehemently denied that Byleveld’s promotion had anything to do with his investigation of Schultz, McGurk and Smith.

‘It is indeed a sad day when a media organisation chooses to question the credentials of a detective of the stature of Piet Byleveld and to insinuate that he was not appointed to a higher rank on merit,” police spokesperson Sally de Beer responded.

She said the promotions process started in April last year when Commissioner Bushie Engelbrecht, deputy head of Gauteng police, wrote a letter of recommendation.

The pressure on the Scorpions this week was also reflected in a public egg-dance by Mpshe. After initially confirming on Talk Radio 702 last week that Mbeki had asked him to review the Selebi case, he back-tracked on e.tv, denying that the president had ever ‘mentioned the Selebi name to me”.

The M&G has established that Mpshe’s instructions on Selebi did not come from Mbeki himself, but from Mojanku Gumbi, the president’s legal adviser and trusted aide. Gumbi is understood to have briefed Mpshe before he was officially appointed acting national director.

Mpshe met Gumbi at the Union Buildings on the afternoon of September 23 — the day Pikoli was suspended. Mpshe then held a meeting with Mbeki at his official residence, Mahlamba’Ndlopfu.

Gumbi declined to comment this week, saying that she would not talk ‘on my work as an advocate”. Tlali, the NPA spokesman, did not deny that Mpshe had met Gumbi before his encounter with Mbeki. ‘Advocate Gumbi is one of the most senior members in the presidency, and so discussions there were around his appointment,” Tlali said.

The Cabinet this week defended Mbeki’s actions, describing as ‘baseless” suggestions that ­Pikoli’s suspension had created a constitutional crisis. ‘Government, under the leadership of President Mbeki, remains committed to the doctrine of separation of powers and finds the intimation that suspending the national director of public prosecutions undermines this doctrine unjustified, misleading and amounts to an extreme exaggeration.”

Mpshe was expected to name a team of four ‘experts” on Friday to assist him with his review of the Selebi investigation.

Byleveld and the bouncers

South African Police Service director Piet Byleveld has been on the case of bouncers and other underworld figures since October last year, writes Adriaan Basson.

Often referred to as Johannesburg’s ‘top cop”, Byleveld achieved fame by arresting the notorious Wemmerpan serial killer, Cedric Maake, in 1995. Maake was convicted and sentenced to more than 2 000 years in prison.

He then arrested three more serial killers — the Nasrec murderer, Lazarus Mazingane, and the Bruma Lake killers, Simon Majola and Themba Nkosi. He was approached by the FBI and Scotland Yard to assist in similar investigations.

In 2004 Byleveld was assigned to the Leigh Matthews murder investigation after the initial investigation team failed to produce results. He and a team of SAPS investigators apprehended Donovan Moodley, who pleaded guilty to murdering the Sandton student.

Byleveld has always maintained the Matthews investigation has not been finalised — suggesting that he is still building his case on Moodley’s alleged accomplices.

He suffered a setback last year when he failed to convict Frank Zanner, accused of shooting his wife, Sibille, with a crossbow in Roodepoort. The Johannesburg High Court acquitted Zanner on all charges.

On October 7 last year the directorate of public prosecutions in Johannesburg gave Byleveld the task of investigating drugs and bouncer-related crime. He has since arrested a string of alleged drug dealers and bouncers, with the Elite bouncer group being the golden thread. They include:

• On March 22 this year Byleveld and his team arrested Paulo da Silva, Riaan Carelse, Gabriella Grassi, Bianca Gesualde and Rainier van der Vyver during a raid on a house in Sunninghill. Tik, cat and cash were confiscated.

• In early April Byleveld arrested Jason Domingues and Paul Kietzmann in the Pretoria suburb of Lynnwood Glen on charges of attempted murder and assault.

• On April 8, Byleveld and his team raided an alleged drug laboratory in Northcliff, Johannesburg, arresting seven people on narcotics charges.

• In early September alleged drug dealer Jacques de Kock and Hoërskool Florida learner Seth Davel were arrested on charges of drug dealing after the 17-year-old Lezaan Kriel died during a party at a house in Constantia Kloof, Johannesburg. Byleveld is investigating claims that her drink was spiked.

Beeld reported that Kietzmann, Da Silva and Carelse all had direct links with Elite and its former bosses, Mikey Schultz and Nigel McGurk, and that De Kock and Davel were part-time bouncers for Elite.

Schultz is one of the complainants against Domingues and Kietzmann, who allegedly shot at him at the Sandton Fashion TV bar last December.

The tables have now turned, it seems. Byleveld is actively pursuing Schultz, McGurk and Faizel ‘Kappie” Smith, suspected of being the hitmen in Kebble’s murder.

The three entered indemnity agreements with the National Prosecuting Authority to testify against Glenn Agliotti.

Talk Radio 702 reported earlier this week that Byleveld is building a case against Schultz on at least seven charges of murder and two attempted murders.

This includes the assassination of socialite Hazel Crane in 2004 and the murder of her Israeli husband, Shai Avissar. Byleveld is also reportedly trying to link Schultz and his associates to the 2005 attack on Stephen Mildenhall, chief investment officer of Allan Gray asset management.

Allan Gray was a prime investor in the Kebble-controlled mining company Western Areas.

Mildenhall was wounded outside his Cape Town home in what seemed to have been a foiled hijacking.