Former director blows lid off Bosasa ‘cult’
Publish date: 17 January 2019
Issue Number: 643
Diary: Legalbrief Forensic
Category: Zondo inquiry
The former director of facilities management company Bosasa yesterday delivered explosive testimony before the State Capture Commission of Inquiry by revealing how it secured multimillion-rand government contracts during Jacob Zuma’s presidency. Legalbrief reports that Angelo Agrizzi’s evidence is expected to unpack corruption, fraud and money laundering as well as collaboration between corrupt managers at Bosasa and government officials in securing massive government contracts and tenders. Agrizzi, who is the first witness to testify before the commission this year, said NPA officials were bribed to impede the prosecution of Bosasa employees implicated in a Special Investigating Unit (SIU) probe. A report on the IoL site notes that Agrizzi's evidence implicates 38 individuals including some that fingers himself in unlawful conduct. He likened Bosasa, which is now called African Global Operations, to a cult. Agrizzi worked for Bosasa between 1999 and 2017 and has intimate knowledge of how the company improperly secured security, fencing, catering and other contracts from the Departments of Home Affairs, Correctional Services as well as Justice and Constitutional Development. The total value of these contracts soared to more than R1bn. News24 has reported previously on how Bosasa lavished gifts and cash on Ministers Nomvula Mokonyane and Gwede Mantashe as well as Deputy Minister Thabang Makwetla, and also revealed how top ANC MP Vincent Smith accepted cash for his daughter’s university fees from Bosasa. In 2009, the SIU finalised a report that detailed how Bosasa had bribed former prisons boss Linda Mti as well as former correctional services CFO Patrick Gillingham with cash, cars and gifts in exchange for major catering and fencing tenders at prisons around the country. The report was referred to the NPA in February 2010, where it has gathered dust. Amid allegations of ‘political interference’ and incompetence the case has been delayed.
Agrizzi says it took him a while to expose corruption at the facility’s company because he had a near-death experience, but now wants to rectify his mistakes. A report on the iAfrica site notes that he said he was so deeply involved in criminal activities at Bosasa that he started to think they were all above board. ‘You become so engrossed with what is happening that you start believing that was is happening is right. I was blunt, I kept quiet and I should have exposed those illegal activities from day one,’ he said. Addressing his brush with death, he said he was admitted to hospital with a heart tumour and ‘when I came out of the coma, myself and my family made a conscious decision that we would clean up where we had made mistakes’.
Agrizzi also implicated former SAA chairperson Dudu Myeni claiming she shared top secret information. A TimesLIVE report notes that Agrizzi, who worked as the chief operating officer at Bosasa until December 2016, told investigators that Myeni shared confidential information about an NPA investigation into Bosasa, at the Sheraton Hotel in Pretoria. The commission heard that investigators confirmed that Myeni was staying at the hotel at the time, saying the carpet pattern shown in a picture taken by Agrizzi at the time matched the floors at the Sheraton. Advocate Paul Pretorius told Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo that he (Zondo) would have to decide whether Agrizzi was speaking the truth, but they had enough reason to believe him. ‘The witness implicates himself in serious criminal acts,’ Pretorius said, adding, ‘it’s manifestly in the public interest that it should be heard’.
What makes the Bosasa leg of the commission’s journey so important is that it sheds light on how private sector interests used bribes, influence and schemes to loot the public purse. In a News24 analysis, Kyle Cowan notes that on the face of it, the Bosasa story sounds all too familiar – except this time, it is not three brothers from India who found themselves friends to a President, but rather Eastern Cape businessman Gavin Watson with struggle credentials and cronies with no qualms. Watson has close links to the ANC thanks to struggle credentials that involved the Watson brothers refusing to play for all-white rugby teams pre-1994. A host of other executives, each with their own connections to the political realm joined along the way, opening more doors. Now Agrizzi is pulling the plug. He is finally going to speak out about his years at Bosasa – the millions allegedly paid in bribes, the covert operations to destroy evidence to keep government investigators in the dark and how a Krugersdorp company that started out providing catering at mine hostels became a billion rand tender machine. It’s a story fit for the big screen. And thanks to the state capture commission, SA will have a front row seat. ‘
Meanwhile, the State Capture Commission’s rapidly growing record confirms that Zuma has thus far garnered the highest number of individual 3.3 notices – an official document served on those implicated by witness testimony. A Daily Maverick report notes an audit of proceedings between August and November 2018 shows that the former number one is also culprit number one, having been implicated by seven of the 15 non-institutional witnesses who have testified so far. Those include current and former Public Enterprises Ministers, Pravin Gordhan and Barbara Hogan, former Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene and former Mining Minister, Ngoako Ramatlhodi. Zuma has also been implicated by Ramatlhodi’s former adviser, Advocate Samuel Muofhe, who said he had allegedly offered him the job of the country’s National Director of Public Prosecutions while former Cabinet spokesperson Themba Maseko said Zuma allegedly called to lean on him to help the Guptas in what was then the beginning stages of their quest to build a media empire. Zuma’s attorney, Daniel Mantsha, who is also the recipient of a 3.3 notice as an implicated party, did not respond to questions about why the former President has thus far opted to disregard the damaging allegations or failed to counter them by providing the commission with an alternative version. In addition to Zuma, the commission has also slapped eight former Cabinet Ministers with notices that they are implicated. Notices have also been issued to four sitting Ministers.
