National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli’s failure to give his political superiors full details of the investigation into police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi — and possibly of Selebi’s planned arrest — led to his suspension, according to a range of official sources.

A little-known South African firm that once had a shot at the oil sector big league has found itself embroiled in one of the United States’s most sensational corruption trials. Procura Financial Consultants, effectively dormant now, was a close corporation owned by five friends. It won, but then lost, preferential rights to some of West Africa’s most promising oil acreage, potentially worth billions.

When South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) boss Dali Mpofu led the public broadcaster to quit the South African National Editors’ Forum last week in protest against the ”profit-driven” media’s treatment of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, he neglected to mention a commercial interest that might have clouded his own judgement.

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.

South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) legal services head Mafika Sihlali stands accused of milking the South African Post Office of millions of rands in fees that were not earned. Sihlali’s former legal practice charged more than R6-million to restructure the parastatal — an exercise that came to naught.

Paul Mashatile, Gauteng’s powerful but controversial finance minister, had a close relative’s tuition fees paid last year by a consultant who benefits from provincial government contracts. Documents show that a Midrand college invoiced Mashatile for tuition fees amounting to more than R20 000, but that the consultant, Donovan Nadison, paid.

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.