Regular runs to Cape Town’s GrandWest casino to cash in table chips helped fund the R9-million floor-crossing campaign of controversial Cape Town councillor Badih Chaaban, the Mail & Guardian can reveal.
The former spokesperson of Chaaban’s National People’s Party (NPP), Juan Duval Uys, made a sworn affidavit this week describing visits to the Goodwood casino to change stacks of brand-new R1 000 chips for cash. The money was then used to persuade councillors from other parties to cross the floor and was spent on salaries, bribes, car payments and medical bills, he stated.
It is unclear whether the chips were counterfeit.
Chaaban’s efforts to bring down the Democratic Alliance-led coalition in the city during the 2007 floor-crossing period only briefly threatened mayor Helen Zille’s control of the council, but the fall-out from a city-commissioned investigation into Chaaban has since engulfed local politics.
Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool on Wednesday reinstated and expanded the suspended Erasmus commission probe into allegations that the Democratic Alliance (DA) commissioned George Fivaz and Associates to spy illegally, and paid bribes of its own.
Uys’s statement, details of which are confirmed by former NPP national organiser John van der Merwe, deepens suspicions about the funding of the NPP and Chaaban’s links with organised crime figures, including the Moroccans gang, murdered mobster Yuri ”the Russian” Yuliantski and financier Mark Lifman.
Uys insisted that the casino chips were the primary source of cash for the party’s operations and dismissed Chaaban’s claims that they were simply winnings from his recreational gambling.
His statement describes how Chaaban’s daughter, Lee, her husband and nominal NPP leader, Johan van Niekerk, and Chaaban’s bodyguard, ”Hussein”, a senior member of the Moroccans, visited GrandWest almost daily to cash chips.
Uys said the three would leave the office at about 11am and return at about 3pm. ”Johan and Lee … always came back with packets of money made up of R100 or R200 notes. It was always between R30 000 and R60 000.”
Uys said he was asked by Chaaban to go and change money for the first time on December 20 2007.
”Badih phoned and asked me to go to the casino for him. He said his security guard, Ashley, would pick me up.
”At the casino Ashley took out a bag of bright pink gambling disks. They were each worth R1 000 and there were 32 of them. He gave me 16 and he took the other 16.
”The disks looked brand new and were pink with the GrandWest casino logo on them. Ashley said: ‘You must be careful and you can only change R4 000 at a time because amounts over R4 000 are checked by a supervisor. He told me to go in and pretend as though we were gambling.”
Uys said that once they cashed the chips they returned to the car, where Ashley counted the money and bundled it in amounts of R2 000 or R5 000 and wrote the total amount on the last note of each bundle in red pen.
”When I saw that, I knew that all the money [was] from here because that is exactly how the money used to arrive at the office with Johan [van Niekerk] or Lee [Chaaban]. It always had the red writing on the last note and was tied in little bundles,” Uys said.
Uys said he was sent to the casino again shortly after Christmas, and with Ashley changed another R32 000. He cashed chips at the casino once more before falling out with Chaaban in February.
Explaining his departure from the NPP, he said: ”It’s not in my nature to support a hopeless cause.”
‘Here is your money’
According to Uys all 31 NPP councillors in various Western Cape municipalities were paid to join the party. Many others who ultimately failed to cross the floor also took cash from Chaaban.
From time to time, his affidavit states, floor-crossers were paid directly in casino chips.
”It was around the 7th of January when [suspended Independent Democrats councillor] Omar came to the office looking for his money. Omar asked Badih for his money and Badih gave him six casino disks and said: ‘Here is your money for December’.”
Uys said that when Omar objected that as a Muslim he could not enter a casino, Chaaban told him [Uys]: ”You know how this works. Go to the casino and change these disks for Omar tonight.” Uys changed the chips.
Chaaban confirmed spending ”about R9-million” to fund the NPP, saying: ”I’m a wealthy businessman and have taken out loans and bought and sold stuff to float my party. Is that a crime?”
He also confirmed giving casino chips to party members on ”two or three occasions”.
”I’m a gambler and sometimes I forget to change my chips into cash and then when I need cash, I give people chips,” he said.
Chaaban told the M&G he paid Omar with casino chips, and that this was ”not a bribe, but purely some assistance that I gave him and other councillors, like Jackie Nolan, out of the generosity of my heart. Shame, these people can’t survive like this.”
But Omar denied that Chaaban had paid him a cent — ”I’m a Muslim and I don’t know what a casino chip looks like”.
The affidavit lists a raft of other payments to 15 African National Congress and DA members of the provincial legislature and council, as well as to members of Truman Prince’s Independent Civics Organisation of South Africa.
Van der Merwe, who claims he was assaulted by Chaaban last year, said that he had personally handed over R9 900 to Paarl deputy mayor Jackie Nolan and that Nolan received a further R10 000 from Chaaban.
”When I paid Nolan, which was in her house in Paarl, I paid cash and I paid [three other Drakenstein councillors] all at the same time. I think most of them received around R9 000 for joining the NPP,” Van der Merwe said.
”I always received little bundles of R100 or R200 notes with the amount written on the last note in red pen — I always paid people in cash.”
Confronted with Uys’s allegations, Chaaban said he would take legal action against his former spokesperson. ”This man has more problems than the whole of South Africa put together. He is a lunatic and I will put a stop to this,” he said. GrandWest Casino refused to comment.
Probing spygate
The judicial commission of inquiry into Cape Town’s ”spygate” affair is to be reconstituted with a broad new mandate.
Rasool has been handed a summary of evidence collected by the commission, including cellphone records of Zille, which he believes are among the grounds to continue the probe.
The commission was established to investigate claims that the city commissioned illegal spying before the September 2007 floor-crossing to prevent Chaaban from toppling the DA-led ruling coalition.
According to the summary, Zille made cellphone contact with George Fivaz and Associates partner Niel van Heerden and investigator Phillip du Toit several times.
It suggests this contradicts her insistence that she was not involved in launching the investigation.
Zille told the M&G that she recalled phoning Van Heerden only once, when she heard Du Toit had been arrested.
The reconstituted commission will also investigate claims that the DA offered Independent Democrats councillor Sheval Arendse cash to cross the floor and commissioned illegal surveillance in the George municipality.
It will also look at previously excluded evidence that Chaaban’s conduct before the floor-crossing period was illegal.