Sam Sole Author

Glenn Agliotti, the Brett Kebble associate who is close to Police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi, has been identified by the Scorpions as a "boss" of "one of South Africa’s most prominent syndicates" smuggling drugs and other contraband. Scorpions Gauteng head Gerhard Nel dropped the bombshell — although under the cover of a code name.

National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi visited the Johannesburg home of slain businessman and fraudster Brett Kebble several times last year, mostly for social occasions, three sources with direct personal experience of the visits have told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>.

The signature of African National Congress presidency head Smuts Ngonyama on a 2001 friendship pact with Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party — beneath that of Oilgate’s Sandi Majali — cements evidence that South Africa’s ruling party backed Majali’s pledges of political support to the embattled Iraqi regime.

Michael Donen, the advocate heading the commission that will investigate South African abuse of the Iraq Oil for Food Programme, has shrugged off a charge that he will not be independent. Recently, Democratic Alliance justice spokesperson Sheila Camerer demanded that President Thabo Mbeki replace Donen.

The Donen commission, appointed by President Thabo Mbeki to probe abuse of the Iraq oil-for-food programme, will not investigate political bribery first reported by the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>. The Presidency announced the commission, led by senior counsel Michael Donen, last Friday.

Sandi Majali’s controversial R65 000 loan for the renovation of Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya’s home was made only four weeks after a consortium, IT Lynx — of which he was a part — demanded that Skweyiya award it a stalled R400&#8209;million tender. This new evidence casts doubt on Majali’s earlier excuse that he had no motive to try to bribe Skweyiya.

Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) this week criticised Imvume Management and oil parastatal PetroSA over the Oilgate transaction that funded the African National Congress before last year’s elections. Scopa’s critique — the first official, public acknowledgement that the transaction was irregular — contradicted the National Assembly’s adoption a day earlier of Public Protector Lawrence Mushwana’s report on Oilgate.

Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Brigitte Mabandla is to advise the government on how to respond to a report detailing abuse of the Iraq oil-for-food programme — while her party, using her daughter’s law firm, is suing the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> for publishing similar facts.

Oilgate’s Sandi Majali used the names of both President Thabo Mbeki and African National Congress secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe when he sought crude oil from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, according to a United Nations probe. Majali bought millions of barrels of oil from Iraq under the UN Oil-for-Food Programme (OFF).

While the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> is under active police investigation, the subject of its exposés, Oilgate company Imvume Management, has suffered no similar misfortune. In late July and early August, the Freedom Front Plus and the Democratic Alliance tried to have criminal investigations initiated into Imvume.

A top leadership team from the African National Congress, South African Communist Party and Congress of South African Trade Unions has been assembled to try to ensure that Saturday’s crucial national executive committee meeting is a "talk-out" rather than a "shoot-out".

The most authoritative report yet on the $100-billion Iraq Oil-for-Food Programme describes a litany of abuses, including how Saddam Hussein’s regime bestowed lucrative oil allocations to buy international support. This is consistent with <i>Mail & Guardian</i>’s exposés on Oilgate company Imvume Management and its boss, Sandi Majali.

The events that led to the Oilgate saga: Iraq invades Kuwait; UN Security Council imposes comprehensive sanctions on Iraq, including lifeblood oil exports; UN approves Oil for Food programme to relieve civilian hardship — Iraq allowed to sell oil, with proceeds held in trust by UN and released only for approved humanitarian imports … See our timeline on how the ANC got involved …

This is the story of how South Africa’s ruling party offered solidarity to Saddam Hussein in exchange for crude oil — and how state resources were used to help the party in this ambitious fundraising project. The story is important for it reveals not only how the party subordinated principle to profit, but also how it engaged in business through what was effectively a front company.

Over the past fortnight, the African National Congress has maintained that R11-million it received before last year’s elections was an ordinary donation from a private company. But Imvume Management was no ordinary private company, judging by its chief executive’s CV.

An alleged kingpin in the network that helped states acquire illicit nuclear technology has left a trail of footprints in South Africa, and a Pandora’s box of proliferation secrets has been opened. The Regional Court in Vanderbijlpark on Tuesday denied bail to two South African residents who had allegedly manufactured part of a uranium-enrichment plant destined for Libya.

In the Iraq "oil-for-friends" scandal that has engulfed the United Nations and the well-connected in 50 countries, many roads lead to South Africa. But Judge Richard Goldstone, appointed this week to an independent panel to probe the scandal, says there is no special significance in the fact that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan selected him.

In an effort to stem a global scandal that has reverberated in South Africa, United Nations chief Kofi Annan prepared this week to name an independent panel to investigate allegations of corruption in the Iraq Oil for Food Programme. In South Africa several companies, at least two of them with ties to the African National Congress, have been implicated.

The African National Congress and its two most senior officials are suing the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> for R3-million in response to articles and commentary relating to oil purchased from the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.

Walter Senoko, the man whose R1-million payment to Mpumalanga politician Steve Mabona we exposed last week, obtained an interdict in the Pretoria High Court on Thursday preventing the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> from publishing certain follow-up information.

The National Prosecuting Authority’s statement that the African National Congress owns a 10% stake in Schabir Shaik’s Nkobi Holdings — meaning the party stood to benefit from the arms deal — seems to reinforce suspicions it has moved into business it would rather keep from the public eye.

Nelson Mandela has been drawn into the controversy surrounding Deputy President Jacob Zuma. One of the R1-million amounts referred to in the draft charge sheet against Zuma’s financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, was in fact a donation from the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

When President Thabo Mbeki wrote to his Nigerian counterpart in 1999 to support an application to buy crude oil from that country, the wording was ambiguous. When he responded last week to the apparently fraudulent diversion of the resulting contract, it only added to the confusion.

Nigeria’s national oil authority this week confirmed what the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> has said all along: the lucrative oil contract scooped by a Cayman Islands company was, in fact, allocated to the South African government.

The man at the centre of an influence-for-shares scandal rocking parastatal Transnet and the Department of Public Enterprises has — despite attempts to obscure his role — been acting as an official fundraiser for the African National Congress.

Jeff Radebe told Transnet to hand a privatisation tender to a company that was patently unsuited to the job – but in which the ruling ANC had an alleged financial stake. Now, after a court battle, the transport parastatal has to pay R57-million in damages.