Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils’s own ministerial review commission on intelligence has delivered a sharp critique of the ministry’s new draft Protection of Information Bill.
New details have emerged concerning documents that allegedly link Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi to fugitive Belgian fraudster Jean Claude Lacote.
Sam Sole, the M&G‘s award-winning investigative reporter, and Matthew Burbidge, news editor of the M&G Online, interviewed Seymour Hersch, the original newsman, who says ”The wonderful thing about our profession is if we do it right, stories are not Democrat or Republican, left or right, hawk or dove, pro or anti-government. Stories are stories, and they’re just the truth.”
ANC president Jacob Zuma’s corruption trial will not go ahead in August this year. The Mail & Guardian has established that the legal teams of both Zuma and French arms company Thint have told the National Prosecuting Authority and KwaZulu-Natal Judge President Vuka Tshabalala that they will not be ready to proceed on August 4 in the Pietermaritzburg High Court.
Did French fugitive from justice Jean-Claude Lacote have evidence implicating Jackie Selebi and other police officials in crime?
The state’s case against police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi could be a major casualty of the African National Congress’s drive to shut down the Scorpions. The Mail & Guardian has established that seven of the eight investigators working on the Selebi case have already resigned or are in the process of leaving the unit.
If new official secrets legislation had been on the statute books, the Mail & Guardian‘s award-winning articles about police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi could have been illegal — and M&G reporters could have faced lengthy jail terms. The Protection of Information Bill was published for comment by Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils last week.
The Scorpions have reopened the arms-deal investigation in what may be their last major assignment. The Mail & Guardian has established that the Scorpions recently registered an investigation into South Africa’s multibillion-rand purchase of jet trainers and fighter jets from British arms giant BAE Systems and Sweden’s Saab.
Confidential documents obtained by the Mail & Guardian reveal that arms giant ThyssenKrupp desperately lobbied the government in an attempt to head off a German probe into South Africa’s arms deal. The German prosecuting authorities are probing claims that the company bribed South African officials and politicians to land a contract for warships.
The African National Congress effectively owns The Network Lounge, the company that hosted a controversial meeting place for business at the party’s Stellenbosch and Polokwane conferences in 2002 and last year. This has emerged amid fallout from the Mail & Guardian‘s exposés on the ruling party’s use of front company Chancellor House.