A nasty little reputation problem has emerged for financial services group FirstRand Bank and its subsidiary, Discovery. This comes as Discovery has been trumpeting its results while downplaying disputes with doctors and the registrar of medical schemes — and as FirstRand has been talking up its proposal to unbundle its majority shareholding in Discovery.

What’s in the top-secret report that former spy boss Billy Masetlha finally got his hands on this week? The National Intelligence Agency will not say what is in the report. Through the state prosecutor, the agency opposed Masetlha’s request for access to the document to support his defence against a fraud charge.

Two security guards at Gauteng finance minister Paul Mashatile’s Johannesburg home threatened Mail & Guardian photographer Lisa Skinner when she took pictures of the property. Skinner this month visited the well-protected house in Kelvin, north of Johannesburg, to take pictures for a story the M&G is investigating.

Crucial security functions at Parliament, the South African Revenue Service, the KwaZulu-Natal legislature and two parastatals are in the hands of a firm with a history of corrupt practices, the Mail & Guardian can reveal. Africa Strategic Asset Protection won multimillion-rand contracts for Parliament in what appear to be clear cases of tender-rigging.

The decision about whether to re-charge Jacob Zuma may be taken only after the African National Congress’s watershed leadership conference in December, sources close to the National Prosecuting Authority have told the Mail & Guardian. Legal and political considerations mean that National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli may postpone his decision until after the first round of the succession battle is settled.

Crucial security functions at Parliament, the South African Revenue Service, the KwaZulu-Natal legislature, two parastatals and several big private companies are in the hands of a firm with a history of corrupt practices, Friday’s Mail & Guardian reveals.

The Special Browse “Mole” Report, dismissed by the presidency as the product of a campaign by discredited “information peddlers”, in fact draws on sources who have given state agencies crucial intelligence in the recent past. The report outlines evidence that the Angolan intelligence establishment planned covertly to support former deputy president Jacob Zuma in his presidency bid.

National police commissioner Jackie Selebi and his top managers leased a luxury executive jet at police expense to attend an Interpol Africa regional conference in the resort town of Arusha, near Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania last week. A source close to the aircraft charter company said the South African Police Service delegation made use of a Gulfstream 3 executive jet and revealed the bill for the trip was about R500 000.

The Mail & Guardian has identified a notorious international fugitive as part of Glenn Agliotti’s former circle of intimates — adding a new twist to the probe of Agliotti’s relationship with police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi. Antonio Lamas, as he was then known, joined the group around Agliotti in the late 1990s.

The story of Cuban fugitive Nelson Pablo Yester-Garrido has all the elements of a spy thriller, including spies, submarines, fast cars, Russian mobsters, arrests, escapes and a strip club. Yester-Garrido, now 47, was arrested in 2002 in Johannesburg by police acting on an Interpol warrant.