Ministry of Crime: An Underworld Exposed

By Mandy Wiener

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan South Africa
• Release date: Oct 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781770105768

Mandy Wiener

Mandy Wiener is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of the true-crime bestseller Killing Kebble: An Underworld Exposed, the acclaimed memoir My Second Initiation (co-written with Advocate Vusi Pikoli) and Behind the Door: The Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp Story (co-written with Barry Bateman). Wiener has been reporting on crime, the courts and politics in South Africa for the past decade.

Book preview

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

Despondency 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 neur­osis 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.

Standing 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 floor with a view more spectacular than the previous.

It’s 2pm on a hot, dry Saturday afternoon in early December 2016. The sense of irony in the location of this end-of-year function is not lost on forensic consultant Paul O’Sullivan. He had reportedly bought Krejcir’s mansion a year previously for R12.8 million, through an intricate company shareholding. One of only three bidders, he was rumoured to have been smuggled into the auction under a blanket on the back seat of a car so that the media would not know he was a potential buyer. He has also consistently denied having bought the property, despite several sources confirming otherwise.

The gathering on the patio is an eclectic mix of characters. The suspended head of police watchdog Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), Robert McBride, a man with a chequered history and a veteran of law enforcement who was suspended from his job for 18 months, from March 2015 until October 2016. Major General Shadrack Sibiya, fired as the head of the Hawks in Gauteng and the man who once oversaw the police investigation into Krejcir and arrested him on three separate occasions. Candice Coetzee, a captain in the police’s Crime Intelligence department who had infiltrated Krejcir’s inner circle with her reputation as ‘Beeka’s cop’. Also suspended. O’Sullivan’s assistant Sarah-Jane Trent, who would later be arrested alongside the Irishman for impersonating an IPID officer while investigating the acting national police commissioner. The identity of the man standing at the braai is not as obvious as the others. Jacob Nare, a state witness who had agreed to testify against Krejcir about his eyewitness accounts of kidnap, assault and murder, is responsible for braaiing the meat. He is being kept under guard by O’Sullivan because the state’s witness protection programme is so compromised that Nare’s safety cannot be guaranteed.

They sit at the table outside where Krejcir conducted numerous TV interviews, the jacuzzi and pool alongside them. There’s a statue of Buddha and, incongruously, a figurine of a naked female torso. The group mills about the house, which is a shell of the gangster headquarters it had once served as.

Radovan Krejcir bought this home in 2008 for R13 million, one year after arriving in South Africa and being arrested on an Interpol red notice. Legend has it that he stepped onto the property with a briefcase full of cash and announced it would be his. But, of course, that could just be wild rumour, embellished to further enhance the myth of the man who came to run Joburg’s underworld.

At the top of the zigzag driveway are three garages, which now all stand empty. A couple of years ago, they housed Krejcir’s fleet of high-performance cars, motorbikes, boats and jet skis, including a Mercedes-Benz CL 63 AMG and a Lamborghini Murciélago. All with personalised DKR number plates, of course. An empty dog kennel stands alongside the main entrance but there is no sign of the pets now that their owners have moved out.

The en-suite bedroom on the first floor is where one-time bodyguard and fellow Czech Miloslav ‘Milosh’ Potiska lived. The former associate claimed to have worked for Krejcir between 2010 and 2012 and alleges he left the country because he could see Krejcir was sinking deeper into criminal activity. He is now a potential state witness against his ex-boss and has made explosive revelations in a tell-all book, The Godfather African. With his dubious credibility, the book had a mixed reception.

The second floor is the heart of the home, dominated by a TV room furnished with cream leather couches and a fully kitted kitchen replete with top-of-the-range Miele appliances. It was here that the Hawks handcuffed Potiska and Krejcir’s teenage son Denis during a high-profile raid in 2011 while his father was apparently on the run from authorities. Sensationally, the police used an armoured vehicle to gain entry to the property but, in a comedy of errors, they rammed down the neighbour’s gate, causing hundreds of thousands of rand in damage. It was during this raid that the cops allegedly found a hit list in a safe with the scribbled names of those Krejcir wanted dead.

What the cops did not know at the time – and what many still don’t know today – is that Krejcir was inside the house the entire time, hiding out in a secret bunker while task-team members swarmed the property. Straight out of a John le Carré novel, there is a hidden room behind a wall of the living room, accessible only by deftly pushing a wine rack in a certain direction. It’s where Krejcir kept his arsenal of firearms too, I’m told.

It isn’t difficult to visualise former security operative Cyril Beeka in his leather jacket seated at the bar stool at the counter. You can practically hear Clemenza telling Rocco: ‘Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.’ There’s an ominous-looking meat slicer and an orange squeezer left behind by the previous owner.

Outside the kitchen door, a metal walkway elevated over a ten-foot drop stretches out to a building site where a granny flat is being built. There was a raw shell there when O’Sullivan reportedly bought the house and he has been renovating the place. State witness Jacob Nare has been the resident caretaker.

Only on the top floor is it possible to appreciate any sense of warmth in the clinical house. The home feels cold. When Krejcir’s family moved out, they left a painting hanging above a gas fireplace in the main bedroom, one depicting a ship run aground during a violent thunderstorm and a bolt of lightning striking down from a heavy grey sky. In the second adjacent bedroom, a black-and-white framed print of a fingerprint used to hang on the wall, almost teasing the viewer into a CSI reference. Now it hangs in O’Sullivan’s Sandton office, an appropriate symbol for the forensic investigator.

Much has changed for Radovan Krejcir since he first bought this house in Bedfordview 10 years ago. During that period, some would argue he has broken the police service by corrupting rank-and-file cops and keeping generals on his payroll. He has been arrested and charged with a variety of crimes and has been convicted of attempted murder, kidnapping and drug dealing. He insists he is the victim of a conspiracy and is not the gangster boss everyone makes him out to be. He also faces at least three other criminal trials with many more still on the horizon. His name has been associated with over a dozen underworld hits, but authorities have only charged him for one of these. They are keeping him pinned down with peripheral cases as they work to build evidence on the really dirty crimes.

It is because of Krejcir’s tax problems that this house went under the hammer. The South African Revenue Service (SARS) secured a preservation order against him and several other respondents, placing his assets under curatorship. SARS alleges he under-disclosed his taxable income to the amount of R114 million and that he used the corporate identities of companies, including Groep Twee Beleggings, to hide the income accrued to him, as well as his assets, with the intention of evading the payment of tax.

With a slew of lawsuits and ballooning legal costs, Krejcir is also struggling to gain access to his vast financial resources. He has been forced to fire an army of lawyers and has had to go to court to try to access money sent to him by his mother in the Czech Republic. In the past she has been known to fly into the country with briefcases stuffed with cash, but things are not quite as simple these days.

It seems as though Krejcir has been caught up in a morass of criminal charges, court cases and tax woes. His future in South Africa certainly looks bleak, much like the ship in the painting that once hung on the wall in his master bedroom, run aground in a thunderous storm. The only prospect of light breaking through the clouds is an escape, and already authorities have foiled an elaborate plot to flee to South America. They are watching his every move.

Over drinks on the patio, O’Sullivan hands out copies of his document entitled ‘Joining the Dots’, which lays out systemic corruption within the police service and the proximity of high-level politicians to gangsters. The retired general, police investigator and IPID head discuss their ongoing investigations and the threatening text messages they have received. O’Sullivan has to rush off as he is flying overseas, so the others drain their wine glasses and set off home, making their way down the steep driveway and into Kloof Road.

A week later, General Prince Mokotedi – Sibiya’s successor at the Hawks – opens a case at the nearby Bedfordview police station and l­evels claims of espionage, high treason and conspiracy to commit murder against the group that had gathered for the braai. Mokotedi claims the group had conspired to dig up dirt and smear the acting national police commissioner, the current head of the Hawks, the head of the National Prosecuting Authority and the head of the State Security Agency. The motive for targeting these individuals is apparently because they were close to, or in support of, President Jacob Zuma. He speaks of plans to mobilise an Arab Spring-type revolt and attempts to destabilise the security forces. Mokotedi goes as far as claiming that Zimbabwean Intelligence agents and Serbian hit men have been colluding with the group to carry out assassinations. It is spy-era stuff.

This entire incident, from the Saturday afternoon braai at Krejcir’s house to the far-fetched allegations of treason and treachery, is the perfect illustration of what has become of the country’s crime-fighting capacities and the crippled criminal justice system. It clearly sets out how agencies have been eroded by personal vendettas and private agendas and how corruption and politics have won out over justice.

How did it come to be that this motley group of law enforcement officials, some of whom were themselves accused of corruption, came to lunch with the country’s premier dirty-cop catcher, and a self-confessed criminal, at the house that was once the headquarters of the country’s most high-profile gangster? And how did that apparently innocuous meeting become the subject of top-level allegations of treason and espionage? It is a story that winds its way through the depths of the underworld, via multiple mysterious unsolved murders, to the very top of the police force.

It was a scene that would be replicated again, many times , during his life. A swarm of police officers with automatic rifles occupied his palatial villa on the outskirts of Prague as the flashy billionaire crime boss was placed under arrest. Investigators had got wind that there were plans for a custom official to be taken out – he was a key witness in a fraud case against Radovan Krejcir. For six hours from midnight until the morning, Krejcir was held under police guard while officers turned his house upside down. They found counterfeit cash, classified police documents and forged passports, firearms and piles of evidence of criminal conduct. But at dawn, the flashy mafioso who had earned a reputation in the Czech Republic as one of the top organised crime kingpins, pulled off a stunt that reinforced that reputation. He walked out of his mansion, under the watch of a team of police officers, and vanished.

Some say he escaped through a window in a bathroom. Others that he paid off the cops and they let him walk free. According to his own version, Krejcir says the officers asked him for a bribe, and when he went to look for money to pay them, he disappeared. Czech TV journalist Jiří Hynek has spent most of his career tracking the eventful life of one of his country’s most notorious characters.

‘I had the opportunity to see the recording of the cameras and I can say that there was one picture when Radovan’s wife came out and put something on the floor and, maybe 10 minutes after, Radovan pick up something, maybe passport, and escaped out of the house. There was a little gate from the garden to the forest and through this gate he escaped according to the security cameras he had at the house and I could see,’ Hynek tells me. He says there were rumours that policemen had been corrupted but there was never any proof. ‘He became the most famous when he escaped from the Czech Republic. It was really big scandal because our chief of police had to step down and Radovan, for maybe around two years, was number one in this crime business in the Czech Republic.’

Media reports claimed that that morning he made his way to a friend’s house, ate breakfast and was then seen at a petrol station in Slovakia filling up his Lamborghini a few days later. Krejcir has given his own account of events in a book that he wrote about his life, as well as in multiple court affidavits.

He says that he spent 14 days in the mountains around Prague while friends arranged a false passport for him in order to escape the country undetected. He assumed the false identity of ‘Tomiga’. He rode a bicycle into Poland, travelled by train to the Ukraine and then went on to Istanbul and then Dubai. There he met up with his wife Katerina and son Denis. From Dubai, his family flew to the Seychelles where he already had both citizenship and a home. Back in the Czech Republic, he topped the list of the country’s most wanted men.

Radovan Krejcir was born an only child in the town of Český Těšín in the region of Moravia in 1968. His father was active in the Communist movement at the time. ‘He grew up in a very poor region in the Czech Republic. Northern Moravia is a very industrial area. Radovan was part of the family when the father before the Velvet Revolution was a very high-profile Communist local leader. I’m sure he was influenced by his father,’ explains Hynek. Krejcir completed a four-year degree in Economics in Ostrava before going into business, although some believe he studied Engineering. It was after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989 that he made his fortune.

In the 1990s, when the borders were opened, he was smuggling watches from Austria to the Czech Republic. ‘We had a shortage of goods like that after the Velvet Revolution,’ Hynek tells me. ‘It was a good opportunity for Krejcir to make his first money. After that he started to do the bigger business. When he was in the Southern and Northern Moravia in this poorer region, he opened the company for leasing; people could buy cars and they didn’t need to have whole amount of the money, and it was a really good and successful business for him.’

Krejcir says he entered the entrepreneurial world by establishing himself in real estate and then acquiring a printing company that grew to be one of the largest in Europe. With his newly amassed wealth, he moved to Prague, built a mansion and began to flash his money around, driving luxury cars and living the good life. ‘Until the nineties, he was invisible but when he moved to Prague he became part of the group of high-profile mafia bosses in the Czech Republic. He was in high society in Prague and I would say media called him mafia celebrity,’ says Hynek.

Along with this high profile came the attention of the law enforcement authorities, and Krejcir was accused of tax evasion, fraud and counterfeiting. He was arrested for the first time in 2002 on what he called ‘trumped-up charges’ and spent seven months in jail. A company he owned, which imported oil into the country, was accused of avoiding taxes.

Krejcir became politically active around the same time and began to ingratiate himself with powerful politicians and state officers. In 2002, he allegedly funded the election campaign of Stanislav Gross, the presidential candidate for an opposition party known as the CSSD. This relationship was negotiated by a middleman, businessman Jakub Konečný. The agreement was that he would lend Gross the money, two million euros, to fund his campaign and, in return, Gross would hand him control of a state-owned petroleum company known as CEPRO should he become prime minister.

If Gross did not succeed, the money would be repaid with interest. Part of the deal was that Konečný, the intermediary, would obtain a promissory note from Gross confirming the debt. Similarly, Krejcir received a promissory note.

Gross won the election and became prime minister, but Krejcir never got his petroleum company. Krejcir was furious and threatened to go to the media. He believes this was why he was arrested and tortured, to try to reveal the whereabouts of the promissory note confirming the loan. While he was behind bars, Krejcir’s father disappeared. His body was never found and there are varying theories about what may have happened to him. It’s believed he was kidnapped because Krejcir had failed to pay business debts. Krejcir believes the government was behind it and that his father was dissolved in a vat of acid.

I’ve even heard claims that Krejcir himself had his father stuffed into the vat of acid, but this has never been confirmed. A prominent football club owner in the Czech Republic was arrested for the murder but denied being behind it.

Krejcir also earned a reputation for bribery and corruption.

‘We heard the stories that he bribed a lot of police officers, judges and officers in the government. We heard the stories that he had some link to the former prime minister and he gave him some money, but I didn’t see the proofs and in fact Radovan was said to be in connection with the ­people from the government and from the police,’ explains Hynek.

Krejcir was arrested again in 2003 but was not convicted of any crime. Despite not having a criminal record, Krejcir’s name began to be linked to a number of murders. A key state witness, Petr Sebesta, who had testified against Krejcir in a massive tax fraud case, was murdered in 2003.

Konečný, the middleman in the Gross deal, disappeared in much the same way Krejcir’s father had. Krejcir believed the businessman was eliminated because he had witnessed the deal between him and Gross. When the Don of the Czech Republic, František Mrázek, was taken out in a hit in 2006, it was assumed that Krejcir was the man behind it because he blamed the crime boss for his father’s murder.

Krejcir denied this. He maintained that he was linked to these crimes by government officials who had orchestrated a smear campaign against him. Gross was ultimately removed as prime minister following allegations of fraud, and any hope Krejcir had of owning CEPRO fizzled out. The new regime was not interested in honouring the agreement and again Krejcir felt that his life was under threat. It was against this backdrop that his house was raided in 2005.

In 2006, Krejcir was convicted in absentia on a charge of fraud and given a jail sentence of 15 years. An Interpol red notice was issued for his arrest. Meanwhile he made a home for himself in the Seychelles, along with his wife and son. He started a car-rental company, Quick Cars, penned his memoirs and elevated himself into the island country’s high society, associating himself with former President France-Albert René. He became a regular feature at government offices and at the homes of top officials.

Hynek tracked Krejcir down in the Seychelles and went to see him. ‘He was connected to the government and he started some business with the people in government. The government started to blackmail him; they say, give us the money for election and we won’t extradite you back to the Czech Republic. If not, we are going to make a treaty with the Czech Republic. So for Radovan it was a problem to stay in the Seychelles. South Africa for him was a bigger market so that’s why he moved to South Africa,’ says Hynek. The journalist got the sense that Krejcir was bored; in the Seychelles, he was like a prisoner trapped in a gilded cage in paradise.

A Johannesburg businesswoman, originally from the Czech Republic, worked for Krejcir in the Seychelles during his years on the island. At the time, she was in the tourism industry and one of the few people fluent in Czech and English who could help him.

‘He arrived in the country and didn’t speak a word of English. He really taught himself the language so well, surprisingly well,’ she tells me. ‘What was quite remarkable about him, he was a highly intelligent guy; he spotted opportunities that people can only dream about. He is an incredible entrepreneur. He was always surrounding himself with top people. He wanted to know who is the best in anything in town, the best lawyer, the best tax consultant. He connected himself with top people, holding conversations on the same level as them. He understood very quickly the legal system.

‘You know how entrepreneurs get excited about something, like Elon Musk gets excited about rockets? He was interested in finding loopholes in the system. Interested in connecting the dots. He would say, Guys, don’t you see there’s an opportunity? If anything, he was a true entrepreneur; he got excited in that area.’

She says Krejcir never struck her as violent or having criminal intent, and she was shocked when she found out about his past. ‘He was always very self-controlled, very well spoken. He was very funny, but he was never a criminal. I remember when I found out what had happened, I was thinking that’s impossible, that’s not the guy!’

The businesswoman agrees that she thought Krejcir felt trapped and wanted to scale up. ‘He was looking for a bigger playground. Seychelles can be very limiting as an entrepreneur. He underestimated the South African legislative system. You think you’re going to Africa and it’s going to be the Wild Wild West, and meanwhile it’s one of the best institutions in the world and you only learn that over time when you’re actually here.’

Krejcir says that while in the Seychelles, his friends in the Czech Secret Service alerted him to an operation to have him eliminated. Operation ‘Lomikar’ was set in motion to have him killed – it would appear to be an accident or from natural causes. He says that until that point he had lived a reasonably protected life in the Seychelles and the local police force was aware of his position and protected him ‘accordingly’. But then, under pressure from the Czech government, the Seychelles government demanded four million dollars from him to ensure his safety. The situation became untenable and so, he says, he applied for a passport under a new identity so that he could leave the country and seek political asylum elsewhere.

Krejcir was issued a passport in the name of Julius Egbert Savey, whilst his wife and son also received new identities, Sandra and Greg Savey. It is believed that this was done with the assistance of the former president, but Krejcir claims it was done entirely through official channels. Regardless of who was responsible, the government was left shame-faced, with the public clamouring for an explanation as to how the fraudulent passports were issued. Much as he did in the Czech Republic, Krejcir left a scandal in his wake when he departed from the Seychelles.

He says his intentions of travelling to South Africa were twofold. He wanted to apply for political asylum, but he also required an MRI scan because of his medical condition. Krejcir left the Seychelles by boat in April 2007 and headed to Madagascar before flying to South Africa and launching a new life for himself.

The pattern he followed in the Czech Republic and again in the Seychelles, of elevating himself into the criminal elite, ingratiating himself with the politically powerful, corrupting senior government officials, claiming a conspiracy theory against him and allegations of assassination attempts, was set to repeat itself once again.

Three times the magistrate was to drop his pen on the floor. Three times he would bend down to retrieve it. By doing so, he apparently gave the signal that he was ‘on board’ with the terms of the agreement. Arrangements would be made for the delivery of an upfront payment to him, ensuring the release of the Czech accused on bail in the Kempton Park magistrate’s court. Allegedly, it cost R1 million to secure Radovan Krejcir his freedom, paid over in a bag drop on the side of a highway near the airport in Johannesburg.

This is the version of events presented by George Louca about Krejcir’s early days on South African soil – replete with claims that, from the outset, Krejcir began to corrupt his way into the country.

The cops were waiting for Krejcir as he stepped off the plane. An Interpol red notice had been issued and there had been a tip-off that the Czech fugitive would be arriving in South Africa from the Seychelles via Madagascar on a Madagascar Airlines commercial flight on 21 April 2007. Czech authorities had put out feelers to their South African counterparts requesting them to arrest the man they had spent years hunting. Farcically, in the hope that he would be able to slip through the net, Krejcir wore a disguise of glasses and a fake beard. He also had his fake passport issued in the Seychelles under the name of Julius Egbert Savey.

‘Mr Savey’ disembarked from the airplane, passed through an immigration cubicle, and an entry stamp was punched into his passport. He stepped into the queue to make his way through customs and, just metres from the airport exit, he was pulled aside by two men who asked him to accompany them to their office. They introduced themselves as police officers and began to question him about his identity and why he was visiting South Africa. Krejcir did not disclose that he was planning on applying for political asylum and, after interrogating him for several hours, they confirmed that they knew his true identity and explained that Interpol was seeking his arrest.

Savey, aka Krejcir, was subsequently detained at the airport’s holding cells and later transported to the Kempton Park police cells a few kilo­metres away, where he was kept for several weeks while applying for bail.

It was in the holding cells at Kempton Park that Krejcir met a man who became a conduit to the criminal underworld in Johannesburg, a fixer who led him to people of influence and power. The meeting might have been fortuitous. It also might have been strategically manipulated. Sharing the holding cell with Krejcir was a petty thief and known criminal, George Louca, a Cypriot who also went by the name of George Smith. Short, fat and dishevelled, Louca had established himself as a go-to guy on Johannesburg’s East Rand but also had a reputation for being a drug addict. There are some who believe that Louca and Krejcir’s meeting was orchestrated and that they were placed together in a cell intentionally.

Some sources, who do not want to be named, claim that Krejcir’s arrival in April 2007 was not his first visit to South Africa. They allege he came to the country in secret a year previously to meet with the National Intelligence Agency and pave his way. A law enforcement officer who tracked Krejcir’s business dealings during his time here explains.

‘Here’s the fascinating thing. We were told that he met with people from the then National Intelligence Agency. He apparently came into South Africa, met with people from the NIA for one reason or another, we don’t know what, and then left South Africa again, back to the Seychelles. We confirmed it. My thinking is that he had already in Seychelles decided to come to South Africa permanently, but he needed to find a way or means to ensconce himself here and ensure that the law enforcement agencies wouldn’t extradite him. So he would have cooked up a scheme to present himself as an asset to Intelligence of some sorts, perhaps in Europe or, you know, organised crime in general, and that would have given him a protection factor to come to South Africa and live here and then operate as a so-called spy or informant for the Intelligence Agency. That’s my theory.’

This is a theory that has not been officially confirmed by any law enforcement authority and has in fact been denied by those close to Krejcir.

Louca struck up a friendship with his new Czech buddy and played a central role in his being released. The story goes that Krejcir and Louca were locked in their cell at night, but for most of the day they were free to walk about as they pleased and had access to the fenced yard at the courthouse.

Louca recalls that one day a young girl aged about 15 or 16 appeared at the gate of the yard and signalled to get his attention. He walked over to her and through the fence she asked in English whether he knew a ‘Mr Radovan’. The girl passed a letter through the gate and asked him to hand it to Krejcir. Louca did so and his new friend told him that, while it was written in Czech, it appeared that it had been done so using a free language application off the Internet.

‘Krejcir said it had been sent to him by someone connected to the magistrate dealing with his bail application and that he had been offered an opportunity to guarantee his release on bail in consideration for payment of a bribe.’ Louca remembers that Krejcir was interested in exploring the opportunity but was cautious, unsure whether he could trust the person making the approach.

The next step was for Krejcir to make telephone contact with a person whose number was supplied in the letter. Krejcir asked his fixer Louca to source a mobile phone. He then also asked Louca to make the call on his behalf.

‘I called the number provided in the letter and spoke to a woman who identified herself as a girlfriend of the magistrate dealing with Krejcir’s bail application.’ The magistrate was Steven Holzen, a presiding officer well known in Kempton Park. Louca continues:

‘I learned that the magistrate, a certain Mr Holzen, would grant bail to Krejcir subject to the following conditions:

(1) Krejcir would have to make an upfront payment to the magistrate, in the nature of a guarantee, upon receipt of which the magistrate would ensure that Krejcir was released on bail; and

(2) Upon Krejcir’s release on bail, [he] would make a further payment to the magistrate.

‘After several discussions with the girlfriend it was allegedly agreed that the upfront payment should be in the amount of R1 million and that Krejcir, following his release on bail, was required to pay a further amount of R3 million.’

According to Louca, it was at this point that Krejcir insisted on a procedure to be implemented at his next court appearance that would require Holzen, by way of a prearranged signal, to show he had agreed to the terms and conditions of the deal. They agreed that Holzen would drop his pen three times and then pick it up. Once this had been done, Krejcir would ask Louca to make contact with a woman known as Ronelle. She featured prominently in Krejcir’s early days in South Africa and was pivotal in establishing a business framework within which Krejcir could operate.

Today Ronelle Engelbrecht is a beauty therapist at an ‘upmarket, family-owned beauty spa’ in Pretoria called MatiSpa. She’s blonde, with short heavily highlighted hair, middle-aged and carefully put together. It’s understood that her dealings with Krejcir were set in motion well before he arrived in Johannesburg. Some suggest she met him when on holiday in the Seychelles while another version is that they were introduced by her sister, a government employee who worked in the Seychelles. Either way, Ronelle Engelbrecht set up Krejcir’s primary financial vehicle, the company Groep Twee Beleggings, months before he arrived. She was also a director of a number of other Krejcir-associated business entities. During his first court appearances she was in the public gallery benches, doing unofficial PR for Krejcir, telling journalists about the charity work he had been doing when out for a short stint on a technicality. She related how he had bought hundreds of blankets for an old-age home and for various Pretoria townships, as well as about a thousand soccer balls for children in Soweto.

Engelbrecht initially agreed to speak to me about her relationship with Krejcir but then supplied a variety of excuses for not being able to make appointments, excuses that ranged from a broken hand to a broken car.

As Louca explains in his version, Engelbrecht was the only person Krejcir knew in South Africa and she was someone he believed could be trusted to secure and deliver the upfront payment to Holzen. Louca and Engelbrecht allegedly handed over the R1 million cash in a bag drop-off on the side of the R21 highway one dark night.

Krejcir was granted bail.

The magistrate found that Krejcir was legitimately issued a Seychelles passport, even if it was under a different name, and that he had made considerable investment in South Africa, buying a business and property and expressing a wish to move his wife and son to the country permanently. Krejcir had also applied for asylum in South Africa, claiming that he would be persecuted in his homeland and that the former government had ordered his father’s murder. Outside the court, Krejcir hugged and kissed his son Denis. The words he uttered then were filled with foreboding. ‘This is a country under constitutional law, which will allow me to appeal, and I am convinced that I have done the right thing,’ he said. ‘It’s nice, very nice. Next step? Now I will pay bail and I have to take some rest,’ he said.

As part of the alleged agreement, Krejcir was then expected to pay a further R3 million to the magistrate. In August 2007, Louca claims Holzen approached him at the courthouse and asked him to follow him to his office.

‘Your friend has let me down; he hasn’t made the other payment. You can tell him from me I’m going to lock him up,’ the magistrate allegedly told him.

A few days later, Krejcir asked Louca to drive to Pretoria to meet the magistrate at a restaurant. He watched as the two men spoke and apparently came to the agreement that there would be a reduced payment of R500 000.

In 2010 the South Gauteng High Court overturned the decision by Holzen to refuse to extradite Krejcir to the Czech Republic. The Court found that Holzen should have recused himself from the extradition hearing, as the magistrate appeared to have prejudged the matter during a 2007 bail hearing, when he called the state’s case ‘certainly questionable’. The High Court ordered that the extradition application be reheard.

In February 2018, I went to see Holzen at his office at the Kempton Park magistrate’s court. I wanted to hear from him why he had never publicly rebutted this allegation. His lawyer had sent letters to newspapers that had written about Louca’s affidavit, but Holzen had never given an interview or spoken out about the claim. He has long held a reputation as a strong presiding officer, a straight arrow, who isn’t shy to apply the law. There was never any disciplinary action taken against him and no internal investigation.

I found a man who had been deeply affected by this scandal and who was faced with a predicament. I got the distinct impression that he was desperately frustrated by the fact that he was not allowed to speak publicly about this matter because he is restricted by policies imposed by the Magistrates Commission. Also, how could anything he say make him look innocent?

I can’t say for certain whether I believe Holzen that he didn’t take money, but it is the word of a known criminal and liar who is now dead against that of an officer of the law. There is no hard evidence to back up Louca’s allegation.

Holzen, who subscribes to a Buddhist belief system, has relegated himself to the Traffic Court where he doesn’t have to deal with people, only with paper. Any prospects of a career promotion have been extinguished by the niggling doubts that trail Louca’s affidavit. From a man who was once assigned the area’s biggest cases, he now chooses not to be bothered. He just wants to be left alone.

In 2007 when Krejcir washed up on South African shores, the country was an appetising option for many shadowy characters who sought opportunities to establish a foothold in clandestine markets. The criminal justice system was in flux, the intelligence services were distracted by a bruising battle for control of the heart of the African National Congress, and the police service was being abused as part of a fight for political survival.

It was a tumultuous time. The elite crime-fighting unit known as the Scorpions, situated within the National Prosecuting Authority, was conducting an intensive investigation into the country’s most senior police officer and the head of Interpol, Jackie Selebi.

As a result of the Selebi investigation the country’s most senior prosecutor, the head of the National Prosecuting Authority, Vusi Pikoli, was placed on suspension by then President Thabo Mbeki. This was ostensibly to ensure Mbeki’s friend would be protected from a corruption trial. Mbeki, however, argued that it was because Pikoli had authorised controversial deals with self-confessed hit men Mikey Schultz, Nigel McGurk and Faizal ‘Kappie’ Smith in the sensational assisted suicide of businessman Brett Kebble in 2005.

The entire web of corruption and illicit criminal conduct around Kebble and Selebi was unravelling, which also saw a massive drug bust involving an international syndicate in Germiston. None of those responsible for trafficking the drugs was given a particularly lengthy sentence, but the bust was used by the Scorpions to leverage complicity in the pursuit of Selebi, the police chief. Krejcir and other eager underworld entrepreneurs would have known that law enforcement was in disarray and that it was possible to corrupt and be sufficiently connected to avoid conviction if the right palms were greased.

The Scorpions were also fighting for their own survival, with critics in the ruling ANC insisting that the unit should be disbanded because it had outgrown its mandate and was picking and choosing politically sensitive cases to serve its own agenda.

This resulted in a full-blown turf war between the Scorpions and the South African Police Service (SAPS), as Selebi unleashed his intelligence operatives to dig up dirt on Scorpions members in order to dismantle the case against him. This battle saw individual agencies being manipulated, clandestine recordings being made in hotel rooms and conversations of top-level politicians and prosecutors being recorded, to be kept as ammunition for another day.

The head of Crime Intelligence at the time, Mulangi Mphego, was even charged with defeating the ends of justice by meddling in the case against Selebi. He appeared in court for trying to get the Scorpions’ main witness against the police chief, Glenn Agliotti, to contradict previous statements he had made detailing the corruption of the top cop.

As clear battle lines were drawn and factions established, the events of the period between 2007 and 2009 had a domino effect on the leadership of the criminal justice system for years to come. As a result of this series of events, favours had to be paid back and there was ammunition to be used as blackmail for some time.

On 10 September 2007, Gauteng Scorpions head Gerrie Nel had an arrest warrant issued for Selebi. Days later, Vusi Pikoli was suspended and the arrest warrant was cancelled by acting NPA head Mokotedi Mpshe.

In November 2007, it emerged that Nel was