LONDON — Paul O’Sullivan of South Africa’s Forensics for Justice spent hours in court yesterday defending himself at yet another series of trumped-up charges brought by what he describes as “criminals with badges”. This attack is another episode in a sustained attack by dirty cops who are being exposed by O’Sullivan and the SA Police Services’ internal watchdog IPID. In this extraordinary interview, O’Sulivan joins more dots, explaining why his country is on the brink and stakes at next month’s ANC elective conference could not be higher. – Alec Hogg
It’s a warm welcome to Paul O’Sullivan. Jacques Pauw’s book was out last week it’s caused a big stir in SA. Have you had a chance to read it yet?
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Oh yes, I think I read it the day it came out. I speed read so, it took me about an hour to read and yes, it’s quite an interesting book.
What’s your thoughts on it? I know you’re mentioned in the book a few times. You did say that you’ve helped him.
A lot of the data that’s in the book, even where I’m not mentioned, I have person knowledge of it. I mean, Yusuf Kajee – I have personal knowledge of his criminal relationships. I have personal knowledge of the criminal relationships of Jen-Chih Huang. In fact, if I had my way I’d add a few more names into the book. For example, Lieutenant-General Moonoo who while he was National Head of Detectives, he made 6 trips to China with Jen-Chih Huang and was introduced to a factory that makes counterfeit good and he was introduced as vice-president of Mpisi Holdings, which is Jen-Chih Huang’s company which imports counterfeit goods into SA.
So, there’s lots more where those came from, as it were but Jacques’ book does open up or joins a lot of dots for people who aren’t as close to the action as you are.
Yes, absolutely and I think it makes interesting reading for the public at large and hopefully they start to realise the war that people like myself and Johan Booysen have been fighting for the last number of years.
I got an email from the Secretary General of NUMSA, a big trade union, who said, it’s all propaganda. Why do you think you’d have that kind of reaction from a certain sector of the population?
Yes, I think you’re going to find that. We know that NUMSA are captured so what you have to remember is that in SA there’s a number of unions who have political affiliations. In fact, I made this statement yesterday and I think it’s the first time the statement has been made that I now consider the ANC to be captured. So, it’s not only organs of state that have been captured. The ANC itself has been captured. They’ve captured the criminal justice system. They started a process to capture the courts, the High Courts, the Appeal Court, and the Constitutional Court so, SA really is at a point now where it’s ‘make it or break it’ time. It’s all well and good writing books and whatnot but what we now have to do, as a civil society, has to stand up and say, ‘stop.’ This country is not going to the way of Zimbabwe where we have a pathocracy state. We’re going to save SA and we’re going to make it what it was intended to be always, by those brave people that spent years and years fighting against apartheid and some of them paid the supreme price. They did not pay that price so that a handful of people could steal the country.
When you say, ‘the ANC is captured,’ does that bring a different complexion onto the Elective Conference in December?
Absolutely it does. You see, the Elective Conference is intended by those that have captured the ANC to become a foregone conclusion and the reason for that is quite simple. The leadership of the ANC, not the whole leadership of the ANC but a number of people leading the ANC, are themselves engaged in criminal activity. It’s very easy for us all to point a finger at Zuma. At this moment in time I have still to find any prima facie evidence of criminal conduct committed by Zuma. That is not the case with some of his ministers and some of those ministers have a lot of explaining to do and instead of doing the explaining what they’ve done, collectively, is they’ve captured the heart and soul of the ANC so that you can now say that the ANC is being led by criminals. You’ve got another grouping within the leadership of the ANC, who are trying to decriminalise the ANC, and the whole country has to hope that they win because if they don’t, the captured ANC will decide the future of this country and it’s not going to be good.
What’s the best-case scenario in December?
The best-case scenario for SA is that Cyril Ramaphosa or Mathews Phosa or somebody of that nature should become the new elected president of the ANC. If it’s Dlamini-Zuma that gets elected president I’m afraid SA is in for a very rocky ride.
We know where the battle lines are drawn as it were but yesterday, or rather in this past week, there’s been further evidence. Just before we go into this latest billion Rand scam, what is IPID? What exactly does IPID do?
Well, IPID is the Independent Police Investigative Directorate. It used to be called ICD (Independent Complaints Directorate). Now, when it was the ICD it just dealt with complaints against the police. Since the Act was changed and it became the IPID Act, they deal not just with complaints of police conduct or misconduct, but they also have a whole section that deals with corruption within the police. IPID, if you like, are the police of the police so, they have much more powers that the police have, in terms of the Criminal Procedures Act, and they have the right to arrest police officers who have been misbehaving.
It’s a very powerful position and the man who runs it has had quite a colourful history, Robert McBride, but also quite a difficult time lately.
Yes, I think he was appointed in 2014, to lead IPID. Now, I think that was a 7-year contract or maybe it could have been a 5-year contract so, in 2019 his contract will expire. Now, in early 2015, after I had been to him and laid complaints with IPID against Lieutenant-General Moonoo, Lieutenant-General Ntlemeza, and General Riah Phiyega and a whole host of other generals in the police for corruption and/or mismanagement and/or fraud – he was summarily and unlawfully suspended by the then Minister of Police, Nhleko, and as you know the Constitutional Court ruled that the suspension was unlawful and the attempts to dismiss him were unlawful. In October 2016, the court ruled that he must go back to work, which he did but he spent 18 months on suspension. It was during that period that IPID was captured. I make no bones about that and that’s seen in the report on our website, on Forensicsforjustice.org. There’s a report there called ‘Joining the Dots’ about the Capture of the Criminal Justice System.
So, they captured the Hawks, they captured the police, and they captured IPID and they captured the NPA. In October last year IPID was uncaptured by the Constitutional Court. We need to see the Hawks, the police, and the NPA being uncaptured and what would happen, in my opinion, if the right person gets elected to lead the ANC in December that those institutions will become uncaptured and hopefully, to teach a lesson to future captures that the persons that have been captive will be sent to prison, and I’m certainly working on that.
But as far as far as Robert McBride is concerned so, he was unable to do anything for 18 months. In other words, no guard was guarding the guards. He was out of the picture.?
It was worse than not being able to do anything but they captured IPID so, what happened was all the criminal complaints that I had laid were being put in a dark room somewhere and ignored. In fact, they went a step further. They gave a copy of my complaint against Lieutenant-General Phahlane to Phahlane and that led to me being arrested, dragged off a plane and kidnapped and tortured by Phahlane and his people, and Ntlemeza was behind it as well. So, all these dockets that I had opened. You had this group of generals, there’s Ntlemeza, Phahlane, Moonoo, and a whole gaggle of them and they had this very high powerful team that they put together, of lower ranked corrupt cops. They dragged me off the plane and tortured me for 4 days and then they got captured prosecutors from the NPA to prosecute me on trumped up charges. So far, they haven’t exceeded on a single charge.
You were in court this week. Was that part of that whole process?
Yes, I was in court yesterday, as you know. After Robert McBride was reinstated by the Constitutional Court, I met with him last year in October and I said to him, ‘Robert, the one case that has to be dealt with and has to be dealt with urgently is this docket I opened,’ by that stage it was 10 months earlier, and I said, ‘this docket that I’ve opened a copy has been supplied to Phahlane and it shows absolutely prima facie evidence of corruption.’ Now, that was a small case in the big scheme of things because I think the amounts of money involved were probably about R100m. That investigation was then put back on track and during the course of that investigation, in order to try and bring that case to a point where it caught up with the 10 months that had been lost on it. I decided, pro bono, without charging IPID to supply the resources to IPID to assist them to bring that case speedily to conclusion.
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That led to a number of interviews and the investigation was expanded. I assisted IPID with that investigation. Now, of course, they know fully what he was up to so, there’s no longer a need for me to sit and hold their hands while they’re interviewing people but the initial interviews that took place last year, November – we were involved in those interviews. Then gradually, IPID took over the investigation and they carried on with it themselves but they lacked the resources, in terms of data analysis and so on, which we have those resources. So, they came back to us and they asked us to help analyse certain data, which we did and we were able to see immediately that Phahlane has a very serious criminal case to answer.
So, as a result of our investigations Phahlane then appointed General Mabula in the NW Province, who himself is under investigation by IPID for charges of murder and kidnapping. So, General Mabula, who clearly has an interest in seeing IPID neutralise then despite the high levels of crime in the NW Province, he then takes somewhere in the region of 15 – 20 colonels, captains, and brigadiers and he assigns them to taking down IPID and taking down O’Sullivan. Lo and behold on the 10th February, this year, they raided my offices. I thought they were people coming to kill me so I left but they arrested my attorney, Sarah-Jane Trent. Then 3 days later they arrested me. Both arrests were declared unlawful and they’ve come with a whole lot of charges against this. They’ve dragged their feet because we were arraigned in court and then they kept delaying it saying, ‘we’re carrying out further investigations.’ We took a very hard line with them in court and eventually on the 6th October 2017, the court ruled that we must be ready to plead and start the trial on the 8th November, because we had to force them to start the trial because we know we’ve done nothing wrong.
So, the court ruled that they had to give us a copy of the docket before the 8th November, which means they should have handed it to us, at the latest, on the 7th November. On the 8th November, yesterday, we arrived in court and we said, ‘why haven’t you given us the docket?’ They said ‘no, we’ll give it to you after today.’ No, but that’s not what was agreed. Then they handed over a 4-page letter with 34 charges on it, which they intended to add, and those charges included charges of racketeering, managing a criminal enterprise, corruption, all sorts of fancy charges. The sort of charges that the people that carried out the investigation should be facing. So, the matter then went before the court and we argued for several hours and at the end of it the Magistrate said, ‘this is ridiculous – the conduct of the State is unlawful.’ They cannot continue like this and I’m striking the matter from the role. If they want to bring these charges back to court they have obtain a certificate from the National Director of Public Prosecutions.
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So, we are now going to start the process to expose these criminals with badges and criminals with gowns, and actually turn the whole thing back on them. That’s what we’re going to do but we realised that they’ve intensified their actions in the last few months for the simple reason that we have uncovered more corruption and fraud on their part. I’m talking about contracts for IT supplies with the police in SITA. Now, part of the police IT budget is managed by SITA, which is the State Information Technology Agency, and over the last 5 years, due the corrupt relationship between Phahlane and others underneath Phahlane, including his own wife. This company called FDA (Forensic Data Analysis) is owned by a guy called Keith Keating. What they have been doing is they’ve been sending money to Namibia to the bank account of a guy called Durand Snyman. Durand Snyman then transfers the money from Namibia back to SA, and that money was used to purchase cars. Not just for Phahlane but also for his wife, for his daughter, his sister, and for other employees within the Police Service, including the head of cyber forensics in the police and then carried out…
Paul, let’s just slow down a little bit there and unpack this thing because it can get a bit confused for people who aren’t as close as you are. There is an IT company run by this guy called Keating, you said. Keith, is it?
Yes, Keith Keating.
Keating then gets R1bn contract from Phahlane, from the police?
Who said R1bn?
Well, I’m asking.
It’s R6bn.
All right, he gets a R6bn contract. Phahlane then, through the IPID, through the investigators of the police that you’ve said. They find out that Keating has bought cars, which he’s given to Phahlane, to his wife, to his sister, etc. That evidence – it’s kind of open and shut. Either he bought the cars for them but he obviously used the Namibian fellow, Durand Snyman, as you call him.
Yes, Snyman has the company in Pretoria that supplies cars and some of these cars, you can match the pricing so, you’ll see a transfer to Namibia, for example, of R250.m000, and a week later Phahlane’s daughter is driving around in a VW Golf.
Just reading in Jacques Pauw’s book as well. He explained that Phahlane is an interesting fellow in that apart from his own background, but his wife was appointed as a brigadier. Was she a police person as well beforehand, did she have experience?
Yes, Phahlane has a habit of, and I don’t like to be rude, but copulating with police officers. So, he has a number of mistresses in the police who’ve all received favourable promotions. All those promotions are now being looked at again. So, you have this fellow, Phahlane, who wasn’t only dishonest with his business life, so to speak, but his sexual morals are not in place either.
But where was his wife beforehand? What kind of rank did she have in the police before she was promoted?
I don’t have that data in front of me right now, Alec so, I can’t actually remember.
But was she a hotshot?
She was in the police and he promoted her and placed her in a position where she was gatekeeper to some of the contracts that he was manipulating.
All of the evidence is now with the internal police directorate. They are having a go at Phahlane. Phahlane, is he out of the picture at the moment or is he still in office?
Well, we know for example, that last week the prosecutor on the charges against myself, and this General Mabula, and Phahlane, and Ntlemeza, who’s now supposed to be gone completely from the police, were having a meeting at Minister Nhleko’s house. Now, Minister Nhleko is no longer the Minister of Police. So, you’re just left wondering what hanky-panky is going on behind these closed doors?
Paul, when a man from Mars comes into the picture here and has a look and listens to the conversation and the story you’ve been telling us. He’s got to be believing that there’s something really rotten going on there. Is it irretrievable? If, for instance, the wrong people, in your opinion, win the ANC Elective Conference does that mean or what does that mean?
Well, you see, SA for the last few years, and certainly for the last 5-years at least, has gone through this process of being captured. The process, I mean when you’ve got criminals running the Criminal Justice System, what do you expect? People get into a frame of mind where there’s no control. If one looks at what happened and just to give you one example. This company, Forensic Data Analysts, they issued an invoice on the 31st March 2016, which is the end of the SAPS Financial Year, and the invoice was in an amount of R52 942 000. They issued that invoice literally 3 minutes after an order was placed on the police system, and 10 minutes later the full amount, the R52m was paid. Now, where have you heard of anybody getting an order 3 minutes later of issuing an invoice and 10 minutes later getting paid.
Especially on the last day of the Financial Year.
Yes, it was known as fiscal dumping so, you see that, ‘oh, I’ve got a bit of money left in this particular budget – what shall I do with it?’ I know, the guy that bought me that nice car, here you go, here’s R52m. The goods and services they bought with that R52m, cannot have been more than R10m, which means R42m has just been stolen.
Well, open and shut cases it appears but what happens next?
Well, I think the heart and soul of IPID they are attacking and we’ve got to stop that attack. What we have to do, if the whole country has to stand together and stop this nonsense and start bringing the NPA to accountability. We cannot have a situation where dirty prosecutors in the NPA are working with dirty cops to bring down people, like myself, McBride, and others who are trying to expose corruption, and that’s what they’re doing. If the heart and soul of the ANC is uncaptured then that nonsense that I’ve just spoken about will be stopped immediately. If we had decent people running the ANC it means that we’ll have decent people running the country. If we have decent people running the country the crooks in the Criminal Justice System will be fired and hopefully, sent to prison as well.
So, the stakes in December could hardly be higher?
They could not be higher and the problem is the current split leadership of the ANC that seems to have control of the ANC, in other words, the captured individuals. If they don’t win they know that they’re going to jail. They know that they are going to be facing prison sentences. They’ve stolen so much money from the fiscus so, they realise that the stakes are high for them as well. There’s going to be a battle between good and evil in December, and if good wins, which it should, then SA has a rosy future. If evil wins, as it shouldn’t, then I’m afraid the next 5-years in SA are going to be very rocky indeed. In fact, it may probably be the next 18 months because in my opinion, if evil wins the Elective Conference the ANC will die 18 months later, when the next general election takes place. They will fail at the next general election. The only hope they have of winning the next general election is that good prevails in the ANC.
