Intelligence breaches revealed at inquiry

Madlanga commission evidence leader Adila Hassim has revealed details of tax evasion, fraud, corruption and unlawful surveillance of tax officials, as admitted by Julius Malema’s cigarette benefactor, Adriano Mazzotti, in a confidential affidavit submitted to the SA Revenue Service (SARS), reports News24. She also recorded that Mazzotti had started his cigarette company, Carnilinx, with admitted apartheid killer Craig Williamson, who applied for amnesty for the letter-bomb murders of anti-apartheid activist Ruth First and Jeanette Schoon and her six-year-old daughter Katryn. Williamson was later paid out and left the company, Hassim said. After obtaining permission from SARS, she added that Mazzotti disclosed to it how he and Carnilinx bosses Kyle Phillips and Mohammadh Sayed had paid R800 000 to a ‘legal adviser’ in 2013, in the belief that this person could make their tax problems go away. ‘What’s important about this is that we’re no longer talking about tax and non-compliance. This affidavit has moved off tax and non-compliance at this point. It’s talking about fraud and corruption,’ Hassim told the commission’s chair, retired acting Deputy Chief Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, on Friday. Hassim revealed that Mazzotti said a ‘legal adviser’, whom she did not name, had ‘persistently referred to his contacts at SARS and in particular mentioned (former SARS officials) Johann van Loggerenberg and Ivan Pillay’. The focus of Friday’s session was on Khan’s specific relationship with Carnilinx Tobacco Company founder, Mohammed ‘Mo’ Sayed, and director, Adriano Mazzotti, and various communications between the policeman and the businessmen. The Daily Maverick reports that these included SARS and Treasury internal communications and documents, which related to SAPS Covid-19 personal protective equipment (PPE) and other tenders, as well as other sensitive police matters.

In his 6 May 2014 affidavit to SARS, Hassim said Mazzotti had also acknowledged that Carnilinx had acquired two tonnes of tobacco a week ‘unlawfully and wrongfully … over a period of time’. Hassim provided details of Mazzotti’s admissions to SARS after he made a ‘voluntary submission' to the commission, in which he sought to undermine commission investigator Tshepo Nyatlo’s evidence about Carnilinx – in response to an aborted urgent legal challenge launched by Crime Intelligence boss Feroz Khan. Khan tried and failed to prevent the commission from accessing his devices and the information they contained, according to News24. The commission focused on WhatsApp communication between Khan and Carnilinx co-director Sayed as part of its investigation into alleged criminal infiltration of SA law enforcement. That communication also suggested that EFF leader Julius Malema, who had received a R1m loan from Phillips to pay part of his own tax debt and started the party with financial support from Carnilinx, used his MP position to target Khan’s perceived foes, with Sayed acting as a communication conduit. Malema’s close relationships with Mazzotti and Sayed have been extensively documented. Both deny any wrongdoing.

The WhatsApp chats show Khan allegedly facilitating tenders on behalf of Sayed, reports TimesLIVE. Hassim said certain topics would be omitted from the public testimony and potentially led in-camera, as they involve sensitive material and ongoing investigations that could pose safety risks to individuals, including Khan. A new in camera application will be filed after the commission rejected the initial one. Senior intelligence figures fear the public disclosure of information allegedly extracted from Khan’s seized cellphones could be one of the biggest intelligence security breaches in SA history, reports The Citizen. The allegations emerge from a criminal complaint Khan prepared days before he was shot in an apparent assassination attempt last week, over the alleged unlawful dissemination of information extracted from electronic devices seized during a police raid on his home.