Hoax email case falls apart

The state’s hoax email trial of axed spy boss Billy Masetlha and two others came to the brink of collapse this week when it was revealed that no evidence exists to implicate any of the accused with creating the emails.

Masetlha, IT expert and National Intelligence Agency (NIA) agent Muzi Kunene and the agency’s former IT manager Funi Madlala are accused of defrauding the NIA and President Thabo Mbeki by concocting 73 pages of supposed emails and chat room conversations that purport to be a conspiracy against ANC president Jacob Zuma, his deputy Kgalema Motlanthe and Masetlha.

The alleged conspirators include businessman Saki Macozoma, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, her husband and former National Prosecuting Authority boss, Bulelani, and members of the Scorpions.

Head of the SAPS’s cyber-crime unit Senior Superintendent Beaunard Grobler revealed in court this week that he found ‘no information [relating] to the printouts and/or invoices” on two computers and discs seized from Kunene’s Fourways home on December 1 2005.

The printouts and invoices refer to the 73 printed pages of ’emails” and ‘conversations” that were anonymously sent to Motlanthe and landed up being investigated by Inspector General of Intelligence Zolile Ngcakani and the SAPS.

Less than four months after the equipment was seized from Kunene, Ngcakani produced a report that found the documents to be false and implicated Kunene in the production and ‘handling” thereof.

In the same week Mbeki sacked Masetlha because of an alleged breakdown of trust.

Grobler testified that he found ‘information related to the investigation” on a third computer owned by Kunene — a Packard Bell laptop — but that it could not be proved that Kunene had ‘generated” this information. He testified that a ‘thumb drive” (or memory stick), which the SAPS does not have, was inserted into this computer to ‘view and/or modify” information related to the investigation.

The bulk of the data found on the third computer is not revealed in Grobler’s report, but he testified that it contains numerous keywords used in the ‘hoax emails”, such as ‘Ngcuka”, ‘Tony” and ‘Roos”. Even if some of this information features in the ‘hoax emails” Grobler conceded he has no proof that the computer was used to produce the 73 pages provided to him.

Masetlha’s counsel, Neil Tuchten, has asked Grobler for a detailed report on this ‘information” and how it relates to the ‘hoax emails”.

Grobler’s admissions raise serious questions about the merits of the case, the true authors of the 73 pages and Ngcakani’s breakneck findings, which were contradicted under oath this week.

Curiously, Grobler formed part of Ngcakani’s investigations team, which found, on March 23 2006, that ‘artifacts of emails and chat room sessions found on [Kunene’s] computer through forensic investigation and cellular phone records point to fabrication, not interception, of emails”.

‘These artifacts associated him with them and demonstrated that he had once handled the fabricated email and chat room conversations. These findings, read together with NIA records [which indicated that the agent was a primary source acting with sub-sources], therefore demonstrate that he is also the source [or one of the sources] of the fabricated emails.”

Grobler’s testimony this week did not come close to the seemingly impregnable finding of the Ngcakani report.

Masetlha is on record saying the 73 pages are falsified documents which were not supplied by him or Kunene.

Kunene was paid by the NIA to intercept electronic conversations as part of Project Avani, a ‘political intelligence national stability assessment project” under Masetlha’s leadership. On Masetlha’s version the ‘real” intercepted emails are still with the NIA and it is not clear if the agency will be subpoenaed to produce the documents in court.

An internal ANC investigation also found that the ‘hoax” documents were produced by someone else.

Grobler’s admissions give new significance to Mbeki’s reason for axing Masetlha — that there was a breakdown of trust between them. To sack him for his role in the hoax email saga, the state would have had to prove his involvement in and knowledge of the alleged falsification.

The case was postponed to June 11.