Paul O’Sullivan: We’ll force Hogan Lovells to come clean on SA State Capture role

LONDON — South Africa's famous forensic investigator Paul O'Sullivan and his friend, British peer Peter Hain, are on a mission to expose global law firm Hogan Lovells. The duo have accused the London-headquartered operation of facilitating the destructive process of State Capture in South Africa in much the same way as McKinsey, KPMG and SAP have admitted to doing. They're determined to force Hogan Lovells to own up and compensate the nation for the damage it wrought. I caught up with O'Sullivan at a pub in central London… – Alec Hogg.This is the Rational Perspective. I'm Alec Hogg..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.I've found that travelling South Africans tend to speak more openly. Perhaps it's a function of being away from home. Whatever the cause it certainly adds an element of freshness to my interviews here in London, but forensic investigator Paul O'Sullivan falls outside of that generality. Whether we've been together in his Johannesburg office, a hotel near Heathrow Airport or as in this interview, a pub in Central London, he's consistent. He speaks from the heart, shares what he knows, and holds little back..South Africa's most famous private sector crime fighter is in London this week to support his friend Lord Peter Hain. Hain has arranged a series of events to celebrate the centenary of Nelson Mandela's birth. We met last night ahead of a well-attended DA abroad event and as you'll hear, the discussion quickly moves onto matters close to the corruption busting O'Sullivan's heart, like last week's apology from McKinsey and why he and Hain are as determined as ever to force the global legal firm Hogan Lovells to break cover and admit its role in South Africa state capture saga, fascinating as ever..Paul O'Sullivan back in London, what are you doing here this time?.Hi Alec, well, I could say I was here for Wimbledon, but I wasn't and I could also say I was here for the World Cup, but I wasn't. I was actually here to assist Peter Hain and participate in the Nelson Mandela Centenary, which as you know his birthday was the….Was tomorrow..Yes, the 18th of July 1918, so tomorrow is a hundred years and I must say I had a very nice week. I've been busy with many events over that and this morning we had the pleasure of the company of Harry and Meghan and I must say they're lovely people, they make a nice couple together. They participated in the official launch of the Nelson Mandela Centenary, which is at the Southbank Centre. It'll be running for a month and we've received great sponsorships from various companies and these sponsorships have enabled that exhibition to be shown to the public free of charge, which means thousands of people can go there, hopefully the younger people because I think people your age and my age, we all know what Nelson Mandela did for South Africa, but I would like to see the younger people going there. In fact, I've already arranged a few school trips. Unfortunately, the timing isn't great because the school holidays start….Friday, I think..Yes, school holidays start on Friday, but I've arranged half a dozen schools already to go through there tomorrow and the next day, so great excitement, yes..That's fabulous. I didn't take you for a royalist though, Harry and Meghan..I'm not a royalist, but if you set aside what they are and look at who they are, they're very nice people, and I wasn't all that keen to be seen with them. As you know, I'm Irish originally, although I'm now a royal South African. The Irish were suppressed by the British for 700 years, but let bygones be bygones. Queen Elizabeth, as you know and most of the remainder of the royal family have all visited Ireland in the last couple of years and indeed laid wreaths to the men and women of the IRA that passed away fighting the British, so I think history is history. We can't change history, but what we can do is look forward and not backward, so I think the Royal Family probably has a place in society and good luck to them..Well, recent history, we were together a week ago today in Johannesburg when McKinsey Chief Executive, he'd been in his job for just a week, Kevin Sneader issued an apology. You weren't terribly impressed..No I wasn't impressed. I met with him after the so-called apology and I shook his hand as a human being would, but I made it clear to him that I wasn't happy. I also sent him an email, which I think you published, where I said that this was a fake apology and what they really needed to do is deal with the issues that brought about this state of affairs. In my opinion, that includes dealing with the criminal charges. Now they are in possession of a lot of information which is not in the public domain and in my opinion what they need to do is, they need to open a criminal docket, they need to be the complainants in a criminal docket against those members of McKinsey staff who were engaged in bringing Trillian into the picture, which amounted to nothing more than corruption. You can't have a R1.6 billion deal where R600 million gets siphoned off to a company that actually does nothing..McKinsey has said it will repay the money that it earned in fees, but I guess the big question is what happened to that R600 million that Trillian got, or the Guptas at least..Yes, they have I don't know how many partners around the world, but if you look at the billion rand, it's less than a thousand dollars per partner around the world, that's peanuts. What they really need to do is pay back the R600 million as well. Under their watch, Eskom was brought to its knees and they were paid a billion rand. Okay, so they paid back the billion rand, we want the R600 million back and we want compensation. I think that they have to be brought to the table and the compensation doesn't need to be cash. They can give some time and energy in management services to assist in the recovery from state capture..I was very surprised at the way that Sneader handled it and just to throw something at you, he started by saying "Mea culpa, I'm sorry", he ended off by saying, "I'm sorry", but in between, "There is no corruption at McKinsey" and so on. He didn't go far enough..One of the sore points for me, Alec, was he made an admission there that they had looked at all the documents, so many emails etc. and they could find no evidence of wrongdoing..Or of corruption, he said..Yes and in my opinion, they should've invited somebody from the outside to look at that. They said they commissioned a law firm, Norton Rose Fulbright. Yes, they commissioned them to do a report, publish the report and you can say Norton Rose may have been commissioned to do something, but they might've only been provided with so much information. What's needed is a proper forensic investigation and I'd love to roll my sleeves up and get stuck in free of charge just to get to the bottom of it, but I have absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever when you see the way they treated Budlender with so much disrespect and so what, they've apologised to him. That's irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, Budlender wanted to expose this and they did not cooperate with them and they tried to pretend everything they did was right. It wasn't, it was wrong..What was your reception like from Kevin Sneader?.Well, you know I suppose he was also playing a gentleman, but we need to go back before Kevin Sneader. Saf invited me to their….Saf's the head of McKinsey in South Africa..Yes, he invited me to their offices a couple of months ago with OUTA and a couple of others and I frankly never heard so much bull dust in my whole life. They sat there and explained how they wanted to help South Africa by giving us best practice in fighting corruption and I said, "No, I don't need that, we don't need McKinsey to show us how to fight corruption, all we need McKinsey to do is to put the facts on the table, own up for what they've done". An apology isn't enough, they need to own up for what they've done and they need to put the evidence on the table so we can send their partner to prison..McKinsey have said they're sorry. Hogan Lovells, a legal firm that you've been aggressively attacking have brazened it out thus far anyway. What's an update there?.Well, Hogan Lovells, their strategy, you know they all have a strategy. What Hogan Lovells have been doing is part of a strategy. They have a game plan and I'm pretty sure that's documented somewhere. They've all sat around the table and they've said, "This is how we're going to handle this issue'. Hogan Lovells, their strategy is to play dead. They are not giving anything away. They refuse to participate in any public discussion on the matter. They threatened Peter Hain, as you know, they said to him, "Say what you've said in the public domain and we'll take action against you"..Therefore, I encouraged Peter at a public meeting to say exactly the same as he said in the House of Lords and they've taken no action against him. I've invited them to take action against me, which they don't have the guts to do because they know that taking action against me will result in a discovery process, which will lay bare the dark underbelly of the Hogan Lovells/Minister of Police/head of Hawks relationship, which was wholly unlawful. I've pointed out time and time again that Hogan Lovells were unlawfully engaged by the Minister of Police and the then head of Hawks who himself was unlawfully appointed..The courts found that the appointment of Ntlemeza was unlawful. So, an unlawfully appointed person, unlawfully appointed Hogan Lovells to unlawfully prolong his unlawful appointment and I'm saying the whole thing is shocking and it needs to be exposed. If it wasn't for the conduct of Hogan Lovells, Ntlemeza and Nhleko the issues around state capture would've surfaced a lot sooner and criminal action would've been taken. Hogan Lovells assessed it in neutralising the DPCI/Hawks and they did this because that was what they were instructed to do. So, they took down Anwar Dramat, Shadrack Shabir, and General Booysen and they also neutralised IPID because they pursued a case against Robert McBride. Therefore, they were part of a strategy by criminals in government to capture the criminal justice system and they succeeded and even today, it still hasn't been uncaptured..Paul, we saw what happened with Bell Pottinger. They brazened it out until the pressure started coming from the UK and then you had #GuptaLeaks, which completely put them to bed. Hogan Lovells has not yet hit the British media, certainly not in a big way. Peter Hain has done his bit. Is that what it's going to take? Is it going to take investigations in their heartland and in their headquarters to start shaking that ship because so far, they seem to have believed what's going on in their South African office and not worried?.Alec, let's look at it, you have Lavery Modise in South Africa playing dead, you have Susan Bright in the UK playing dead. These people have put their head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich and hope that when they take their head out of the sand the coast will be clear. It won't be and as a result of that refusal to come clean I'm building up a head of steam and when this steam train gets going they're not going to stop it. I'm not going to publish what we're doing right now, but I can absolutely assure everybody that listens to this podcast that Hogan Lovells will be held accountable..Additionally, the rest of the moves against state capture, do we just have to be patient?.Well, the problem we have Alec, is you can't un-capture and deal with the people who are involved in state capture until the criminal justice system is uncaptured. We heard last week that Jiba and Mrwebi were allegedly cleared by the Supreme Court of Appeal. Well, that's now going to the Constitutional Court and what the judges in that Appeal Court judgement failed to do, the one's that – I mean Jeremiah Shongwe is actually the uncle of Edward Zuma. He should've recused himself, he shouldn't have sat in judgement on a case like that and the other fellow was a chap by the name of Seriti. He shouldn't have been sitting there..There were five of them, so if you take those two out of the equation the odds were then against Jiba and Mrwebi because of the three remainders, two were very vocal in finding against Jiba and Mrwebi, so I think the whole thing needs to go to the Constitutional Court, it needs to be resolved there and if it can't be resolved there the thing needs to be heard de novo. In other words, judges who don't have a conflict of interest. How on earth can you have the uncle of Edward Zuma sitting in judgement over the appointment of Jiba and Mrwebi who were put in those positions by Jacob Zuma? The thing just doesn't hold together..Paul, talking to people in South Africa, there are those who support you and believe that you're a fighter for justice and a crusader, there are those who say you're stone mad. I think you have to be a little bit mad to be doing the work that you're doing given the position that you put yourself in..No, I don't think so, Alec. The people that say I'm stone mad, it's because they don't have the guts to stand up to the injustices that have taken place in South Africa. In that case Nelson Mandela was stone mad, so was Thabo Mbeki, so was Andrew Mlangeni. There were so many mad people, but you know justice prevails at the end of the day, I don't care what people say about me. The fact of the matter is, everything that to date I have said has turned out to be true. Nobody has caught me out on that and at the end of the day all the fake cases brought against me and the multiple arrests, my staff being arrested, our offices being raided all the time, none of that has borne fruit for the criminals out there, so I think at the end of the day if believing in your country and standing up for your country means you're mad then I'm happy to be mad..So what's next?.What I need to do is finish what I've started, so I want the criminal justice system to be uncaptured. You can't have a man like Shaun Abrahams running the National Prosecuting Authority. One minute he wants to charge Gordhan and the next minute he wants to let him off the hook and now he pretends to be going after Zuma; the whole thing is a fake, it's a charade. Shaun Abrahams belongs in prison and the people that have assisted him, people like Jiba and Mrwebi and look at this fellow Tori Pretorius, I mean what a piece of work that guy is. He is the one that now allegedly was responsible for charging Gordhan, meanwhile Shaun Abrahams, when Gordhan was being charged, was quite happy to stand up and claim that he was behind it and then suddenly when they realised the wheels were coming off he blames Tori Pretorius..Tori Pretorius has no guts whatsoever. He should resign his position and leave the National Prosecuting Authority. Zuma has messed up the police, the Hawks, the National Prosecuting Authority, and the Secret Service. He put this guy, "The Minister of Happy Endings", David Mahlobo in charge of the Secret Service. He put all these people in their positions for one reason and one reason only, that they would protect him and his Cabal whilst they stole South Africa. Now the wheels are coming off, things are going to change. Unfortunately, the progress, the change is taking too long, but things are going to happen. We have a number of actions lined up, I'm not going to go public with them right now, and we're going to go with them..I promised you it would be interesting, didn't I? Well, that was Paul O' Sullivan of South Africa's crime fighting NGO, Forensics for Justice..This has been the Rational Perspective, until the next time, cheerio.

Paul O’Sullivan: We’ll force Hogan Lovells to come clean on SA State Capture role

Related Stories

Meet Tshepo Mahloele – Big Capitec shareholder, ABSIP’s “CEO of the Decade” now accused by Holomisa as kingpin of corrupt network

PREMIUM: Making of a great editor – the George Palmer playbook

Premium – BizNews global portfolio: ASML joins – so does Adobe as Bull takes hold again

Alec Hogg: Helen Zille predicts SA choice will be DA or EFF