The Scorpions ”compared my case to John Gotti’s” and were ”obsessed” with bringing down former police National Commisioner Jackie Selebi.
That was some of the damning remarks by drug-lord Glenn Agliotti during the first half-hour of a video interview being screened in the South Gauteng High Court on Thursday afternoon.
After Judge Meyer Joffe admitted the video as preliminary evidence — much to the dismay of the state prosecutor Gerrie Nel — the courtroom became a popcorn box short of a movie theatre, with all eyes on the screen showing Agliotti on a couch, chatting to head of police crime intelligence Mulangi Mphego in a Sandton hotel in January last year.
”They said to me they didn’t give a damn about the Kebble murder … Nel, [Scorpions investigator Andrew] Leask, the whole team,” Agliotti said.
”[They said] Kebble was a piece of rubbish. They wanted to take down Selebi, because they want the Scorpions to keep their entity. They don’t want to go back into the police.”
”Nel told me in his own words at a restaurant called the Silver Orange in Hartebeespoort Dam, he said, ‘We targeted you and Selebi in the press to get to Selebi’. They targeted me through the Mail & Guardian, all the slander, it was through the Mail & Guardian. It was an indaba, part of their strategy campaign. The Mail & Guardian is the mouthpiece for the Scorpions,” Agliotti was heard telling Mphego.
The same allegation — that the M&G was briefed by the Scorpions at a ”bosberaad” — featured during a failed court application by Selebi in January last year to have the charges against him withdrawn.
The M&G strongly denied that such a ”bosberaad” ever took place.
In the video, Agliotti says the practice of targeting people through the press was one that the Scorpions had learnt from their alleged training by the FBI and CIA.
”And they said to me they will have Selebi arrested by a date in August or something. Selebi will be in jail by August,” said Agliotti. ”So it was clear to everybody that this was politically motivated and driven. There’s no other reason for it.”
Agliotti stuck by his testimony that he never bribed Selebi, and that this was what he told members of the NPA and the Scorpions. ”I kept saying, ‘Gentleman, I never bribed the commissioner. He’s my friend. When did I bribe him? What gain did I get? I never bribed the man, you are wasting your time’.”
He added, ”I never had protection from him. I never once went to him and said ‘please help me’.” He mentioned a tender for bullet-proof vests that his company, Maverick Masupatsela, applied for with the police service. ”We never got it,” he said. ”So where’s the corruption?”
Agliotti told Mphego how the Scorpions allegedly employed criminals. He gave the example of Clinton Nassif’s ”attorney”, Tamo Vink, who allegedly shot his wife in the stomach while high on cocaine.
After undergoing rehabilitation, Vink allegedly negotiated a plea bargain for the Scorpions with Nassif for which he was paid R2-million. ”It was him who got Nassif his 204 [indemnity plea agreement]. Here’s a guy they use who’s not qualified, who’s a coke addict, to go and do their work.”
Agliotti also spoke about the death of Brett Kebble. ”They said I paid for the Kebble murder,” he told Mphego. ”I said ‘Do you want to know who paid for it, Nassif paid for it’ … He short-changed Nassif, he owed him money. … He had gotten into so much financial trouble, he couldn’t see the way out. He and Nassif planned it together, they prayed about it, they did dry runs.
”But the Scorpions needed to take me down, and Nassif made 20 statements. I would tell them its Nassif’s fucking money. Then they would find the paper trail and say, ‘Oh you were right’. And I would say ‘he’s your 204 witness — how can you give a man like that [a] 204?”