Glenn Agliotti denies being the crime boss known as “the Landlord”, but new evidence is emerging of the fantastic scope of the international contraband networks in which he was a player.
Agliotti pleaded guilty this week to facilitating the importation of two tons of hashish from Pakistan via Iran early last year.
It was the interception of part of this consignment later in the year that delivered a breakthrough in the Scorpions investigation of Agliotti and his relationship with National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi.
In his plea and sentence agreement Agliotti admits assisting co-accused Stefanos Paparas to import the hashish. Paparas is due to go on trial on March 4 next year, with his father, Dimitri, and another accused, Stanley Poonin. None has formally pleaded yet, but each has maintained his innocence.
Agliotti paints Paparas as the real drug boss, with his alleged smuggling partner, Leslie Alan Curtis, alias Robert “Bob” Lottman, aka “Bob the American”.
Agliotti describes how it became apparent that Curtis “was an internationally renowned drug dealer and trusted friend of Paparas”.
Now investigations by the Mail & Guardian show Curtis was linked to a drug network that stretched from Pakistan, via South Africa, to Canada and Holland — the kingpin of which was Abdul Majid Sulaymankhil, an Afghani who emigrated to Canada in the early Nineties.
Curtis, with Christiaan Alblas and Pedro Marques, was arrested during the Scorpions’ interception operation last year. The three reached early plea agreements in return for testimony against others involved in the drug ring.
In a statement to Scorpions investigators Curtis alleges that he met Paparas first in Swaziland in about 1997, where they were both involved in the drug business.
He states that during 1999 he started talking to Paparas about exporting a consignment of hashish to Canada.
The hashish was already in Mozambique, where it was under the control of a person named Hajijah. The M&G understands that Hajijah was Sulaymankhil, who had the nickname Haji, because of his pilgrimage to Mecca.
According to Curtis, Paparas agreed to assist and introduced him to Agliotti, “a relation of his who is in the shipping business and was going to facilitate this”.
“I went to Johannesburg where Stefanos Paparas introduced me to Mr Glenn Agliotti … The following persons were in attendance at this meeting: Glenn Agliotti, Stefanos Paparas, Ron, the Canadian who was representing the Canadian syndicate, and myself.”
Agliotti would handle packing, customs clearance and delivery of a container carrying 4,4 tons of hash to Durban harbour for onward shipment to Montreal in mid-2000.
According to Curtis’s statement: “The goods were then exported to Canada, where the Canadian authorities later made some arrests pertaining to this shipment. The arrests were made all over the world, like Paris, Bangkok and Dubai.”
Investigations by the M&G suggest “Ron the Canadian” was actually Ernest Pitt, a drug smuggler whose conversations and movements were already being monitored by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
It was Pitt’s phone calls that led the RCMP to identify Sulaymankhil and his South African connections, which included a Johannesburg clothing trader called Abdul Qudir.
In May 2001 Pitt was arrested in Paris and Sulaymankhil was arrested later in Dubai, while Qudir was held in Johannesburg.
All three were extradited to Canada where they were convicted on drugs charges.
Inexplicably, those involved in the South Africa leg of the operation remained untouched — except Qudir.
Agliotti, Paparas and Curtis remained at large for another five years and, according to admissions from both Agliotti and Curtis, continued their smuggling operations until the Scorpions struck last year.
A police source familiar with the investigation of Qudir told the M&G the probe was stymied by the South African police hierarchy and the docket was “stripped” before being shared with Canadian investigators.
There are two other incidents that raise further questions about the nature of the official investigation. The 4,4 tons of hashish was never seized by Canadian authorities. An RCMP investigator told the M&G the shipment was “stolen’’ from the Montreal dockside.
The M&G has established also that part of another consignment understood to be linked to the Sulaymankhil network seems to have vanished.
On October 26 2000 the Natal Mercury reported an 11,5 tonne hashish bust in Durban harbour, a figure confirmed in official statements at the time. But two sources told the M&G that when narcotics detectives formally entered the amount seized there were only eight tons.