SA ties to major US narcotics case unpacked

An accused in the US, who once claimed to be an informant for that government and who may hold key information about SA’s narcotics trade, has pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges. The Daily Maverick reports that the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York this week announced that the Pakistani national had pleaded guilty to conspiring to import heroin, methamphetamine and hashish into the US. In 2019, Vrye Weekblad reported that Indian Mandrax trafficker, Vicky Goswami, in sealed grand jury testimony in the US, alleged that members of the Gupta family were involved in money laundering on behalf of Hafeez. Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said: ‘For more than two decades, Muhammad Asif Hafeez played a leading role in a sophisticated international drug trafficking network that was responsible for manufacturing and distributing ton quantities of dangerous narcotics to the US and throughout the world. The statement noted that between 2013 and 2017, he had conspired with, among others, Goswami. This indirectly ties Hafeez to SA.

According to a 2014 Sunday Times article, Goswami was quoted as saying: ‘I knew some of the ANC leaders and Ministers when I was in SA from our days in Zambia. I gave money to the ANC and contributed to the struggle.’ Goswami was based in SA in the early 1990s. He later ended up in Dubai and in 1997 he was jailed there for dealing in mandrax. Goswami was released from a Dubai prison in 2012 and headed to Kenya. According to US authorities, a year later, drug trafficking webs around Goswami expanded. DM notes that the US attorney’s office statement said that aside from Goswami, from around 2013 he conspired with others including two Kenyan brothers, Baktash Akasha Abdalla and Ibrahim Akasha Abdalla. ‘(It) was responsible for the production and distribution of ton quantities of narcotics within Kenya and throughout Africa and maintained a network used to distribute narcotics for importation into the US,’ the statement said.