M&G investigative journalist Adriaan Basson was past of the team that covered former police chief, Jackie Selebi’s corruption saga and subsequent trial, which found him guilty. Now Basson has produced a book on the scandal that shook the nation: Finish and Klaar.
Watch our video interview with Basson and read an extract from the book below.
Four years after the M&G first broke the Jackie Selebi corruption story, matters are finally drawing to a close. Selebi has been found guilty and awaits his fate and Adriaan Basson, associate partner at the M&G‘s Centre for Investigative Journalism, has written a book, Finish & Klaar, illustrating Selebi’s fall from grace. The M&G speaks to Basson about his new book.
Defence lawyers often joke that their most difficult task is to keep their clients out of the witness box. Advocate Jaap Cilliers and his team apparently nagged Jackie Selebi not to give evidence ‘because of his emotional attachment to the case’.
According to sources close to Selebi, the decision that he should testify was taken at a high-level meeting with his allies — his loyal former deputies André Pruis and Tim Williams, former head of police crime intelligence Mulangi Mphego, police head of detectives Rayman Lalla, and former NIA boss Manala Manzini.
Cilliers reportedly told these men they would be better witnesses than Selebi. Cilliers and Selebi had often mentioned André Pruis as someone who would testify for the defence. In the end he was never called. Neither was Mphego, who was extremely close to Selebi and could have given evidence about his numerous meetings and recordings of Agliotti.
Four years after the M&G first broke the Jackie Selebi corruption story, matters are finally drawing to a close. Selebi has been found guilty and awaits his fate and Adriaan Basson, associate partner at the M&G‘s Centre for Investigative Journalism, has written a book, Finish & Klaar, illustrating Selebi’s fall from grace. The M&G speaks to Basson about his new book.