Ministry of Crime

Mandy Wiener

Description

As a follow up to the bestselling Killing Kebble: An Underworld Exposed (2010), the new book from Mandy Wiener, Ministry of Crime: An Underworld Explored, examines how organised crime, gangsters and powerful political figures have been able to capture the law enforcement authorities and agencies. These various organisations have been eviscerated, hollowed out and left ineffective. They have been infiltrated and compromised and, as a result, prominent underworld figures have been able to flourish in South Africa, setting up elaborate networks of crime with the assistance of many cops. The criminal justice system has been left exposed and it is crucial that the South African public knows about the capture that has occurred on different levels.

Sujets

• Comparative Politics
• Political Science
• True crime
• General officer
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Pan Macmillan South Africa
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781770105768
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Ministry of Crime
An Underworld Explored
Mandy Wiener
MACMILLAN

First published in 2018
by Pan Macmillan South Africa
Private Bag X19
Northlands
2116
Johannesburg
South Africa
www.panmacmillan.co.za
isbn 978-1-77010-575-1
e-isbn 978-1-77010-576-8
© Mandy Wiener 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Every attempt has been made to ensure the accuracy of the details, facts, names, places and events mentioned in these pages, but the publisher and author welcome any feedback, comments and/or corrections on the content, which is based on numerous interviews, court documents, newspaper reports, author experiences and other sources.
Editing by Sean Fraser
Proofreading by Russell Martin
Design and typesetting by Triple M Design, Johannesburg
Cover design by Fire and Lion
Author photograph by Lisa Skinner/SKINNDERELLA

Also by Mandy Wiener
Killing Kebble: An Underworld Exposed (2011)
‘Yes, this truth is much stranger than fiction, but in Mandy Wiener’s hands, it is also more enthralling, entertaining and unputdownable. Simply brilliant.’ – deon meyer
‘After five years of following every thread and detail of the Kebble case Wiener not only had a complex story to which few other journalists had access, but also the perspective needed to turn it into a riveting bestseller that would be both insightful and accessible.’ – mail & guardian
My Second Initiation: The Memoir of Vusi Pikoli with Vusi Pikoli (2013)
‘An account that is as bold, honest and truthful as it is painful and discomforting. Vusi Pikoli is a person of unquestionable integrity, for which South Africa will be eternally grateful.’ – barney pityana
‘A painful, but revealing book about a man who was fired for doing the right thing. Vusi Pikoli is a hero of South Africa’s new struggle.’ – adriaan basson
Behind the Door: The Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp Story with Barry Bateman (2014)
‘Definitive, engrossing, fascinating, brilliant and utterly unputdownable. Wiener has no equal when it comes to true crime, and Bateman’s first-journalist-on-the-crime-scene insight gives it a huge boost.’ – deon meyer
‘Wiener and Bateman have produced a triumph – a riveting, factual read about a killing none of us alive today will ever forget.’ – sue grant-marshall


We know that there are rogue police officers who work with criminals, in the payroll of criminals. Gangsters are owning police officers in this Republic. You give an order and then police officers put a blind eye to that particular order because they are in the payroll of criminals. Report them. It might take time but the wheels of the law are grinding. We will find them. Don’t worry.
– Fikile Mbalula, former South African minister of police, May 2017


D espondency is the overwhelming emotion I encounter each time I sit across from a suspended, fired or retired police officer, general, SARS investigator or senior prosecutor, regardless of their race or rank. I meet with many of them over 2016, 2017 and 2018. Good people who have intentionally been worked out of the system. They have tried to fight back, but that’s proved an impossible task. They spend thousands on legal fees; they live vicariously through newspaper reports and strategise over disciplinary hearings. They dwell, they obsess, they develop a neur osis about the state of affairs of the country and in their own lives. And they all say the same thing: the police are rotten. The NPA is rotten. It’s all become political.
The high-ranking cop sitting opposite me in early 2017, as I embark on the journey of writing this book, is no different. A career police officer who spent years chasing organised crime, cash heist kingpins and mobsters.
‘It’s the proximity between police, organised crime and politics in this country. In South Africa it’s just another day in paradise. It’s not as blatant in other countries. Nobody seems to give a damn. It’s as old as time. People corrupt politicians and they corrupt cops. The mafia has done it for how many years. But it’s never been this blatant. CI [Crime Intelligence] has gone to the dogs. The appointments that have been made. There was a helluva lot, people off the street, they just got appointed into CI and given rank. Family members were appointed with no qualifications. There were a lot of safe houses that were looted, a lot of things that were done that were wrong. It was allowed to happen because of politics. It became a political mechanism. There was no longer fighting to get criminal intelligence. It was all politics and protecting politicians.’
The cop despairs. ‘How would I describe the current state of Police? Captured!’ There is a sense of loss in the officer’s eyes. It’s depressing.
‘The country is fucked. It is bad. It leaves the man on the street – and that includes me – with very little hope. Krejcir made the policemen turn on the innocent victims out there. Your head of detectives nationally! Isn’t that supposed to be somebody who you know will go to the ends of the earth to protect you? And yet that is the man who is captured by Krejcir to such an extent that he will plant you to get you out the way.’
For nearly two decades now, I have tracked the dynamic between the people whose job it is to uphold the law and those who make a living breaking it. I sat through the corruption trial of the world’s most senior policeman, Interpol head Jackie Selebi, heard about how envelopes stuffed with cash were slid across boardroom tables by a drug trafficker and how Selebi pocketed the cash. There was evidence of lavish shopping sprees at upmarket clothing stores. In Killing Kebble: An Underworld Exposed , the book I wrote about the Selebi trial, the murder of Brett Kebble and the relationship between organised crime, business and the police, the proximity of those different worlds to one another was laid bare. Selebi was convicted of corruption and Glenn Agliotti was acquitted of the Kebble murder in 2010. The three self-confessed hit men had since kept a relatively low profile, out of the media glare. But what had happened in the ‘underworld’ and in the world of policing in subsequent years?
The country’s law enforcement agencies and the criminal justice system, from SARS to SAPS to the NPA, had been ravaged. A high-stakes political battle centred around President Jacob Zuma had been raging, and part of the project to protect him was the intentional, malicious hollowing out of the institutions that were meant to uphold the law. The collateral damage was the careers of all those good men and women, like the officer sitting across from me in the restaurant, who were banished. Crucially, the cost to you and me and our democracy was the damage done to the rule of law and the capacity to combat crime.
In this fertile landscape, organised criminal networks were able to flourish. Enterprising individuals, such as Radovan Krejcir and others like him, were able to grow empires. State officials were ripe for corrupting, very little proper intelligence was being collected and there was barely any political will to bring the kingpins to book.
What we witnessed was the conflation of politics, organised crime and the police. Dubious characters put in positions of power and influence at the behest of politicians, corrupt and complicit in criminal behaviour, with organised syndicates on the rampage across the country.
This is the story of the rise and reign of the Ministry of Crime.


S tanding on the deck of the enclosed patio, the assembled group of men and women seem impressed by the vista that stretches out before them. The landscape sets the narrative of a decade of crime, from murders to bomb blasts and James Bond-esque assassination attempts. On the far left is the Wedgewood Green townhouse complex where Serb sidekick Veselin Laganin was shot dead in front of his wife and son by armed intruders one night. Slightly off to the right is the Bedford Centre shopping complex and the Harbour Fish Market with its bulletproof glass, a de facto mafiosi headquarters. The group can also see the intersection where Lebanese drug dealer Sam Issa was gunned down early one Saturday morning in a gangland-style hit. Directly down and in front of them is the house once owned by the ‘King of Sleaze’, Lolly Jackson. There’s the Nicol Hotel near the highway where associates would be put up for indefinite periods, often in hiding. There was even a bulletproof room in case things went belly up. Further off to the right, there’s Eastgate shopping centre and the Money Point shop where deals were struck, fraud was committed, plans hatched and bombs exploded. There was also that bizarre Hollywood-style incident in the parking lot when, on a regular weekday morning, remote-controlled barrels popped out of the number plate of a car and opened fire.
All these landmarks are blanketed in greenery, a characteristic of Johannesburg. In the distance, set against a grey haze, is the silhouette of the city centre, punctuated by the iconic Ponte and Hillbrow towers. It is a portrait of beauty, yet of destruction. The mansion on the mountain in Bedfordview is like a beacon of all that Radovan Krejcir managed to amass and destroy in his relatively short time in this country. Built on 2285 square metres of prime Kloof Road estate, the angular modern house is perched on a cliff, with four levels of faux rock piled on top of one another, each floo