SOUTH AFRICA: Former Interpol head Jackie Selebi to follow ANC leader Jacob Zuma in having charges droppedFrom Fred Bridgland in Johannesburg
CHARGES against South Africa's suspended national police commissioner Jackie Selebi are likely to be dropped when his scheduled trial for corruption and defeating the ends of justice begins in Johannesburg's High Court on Tuesday.
The charges will be removed for similar reasons to those that led to the withdrawal last week of extensive corruption charges against African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma, below, clearing his way to becoming president after a general election on April 22.
Selebi was forced to stand down last year as national police boss and as head of international police group Interpol after charges were laid against him of corruption, fraud, racketeering and defeating the ends of justice.
The indictment, running to nearly 400 pages, alleges that 58-year-old Selebi was paid at least £91,000 by mafia don and illegal drugs kingpin Glenn Agliotti in exchange for a series of favours. These included turning a blind eye to a criminal imports ring operating at Johannesburg's International Airport which flooded South Africa with millions of pounds worth of the recreational drug Mandrax.
One of the gravest allegations is that Agliotti was at the scene when mining magnate Brett Kebble, a top ANC financier, was assassinated in Johannesburg in 2005 and that he immediately made a phone call to Selebi.
Prosecutors alleged that Agliotti, known as "the Landlord", was investigated for cocaine smuggling by UK authorities, but was never arrested because he was protected by Selebi.
Among prosecution evidence is a 144-page dossier from Paul O'Sullivan, an ex-British military agent who headed Johannesburg Airport's security. It describes "a massive criminal syndicate, with tentacles into and out of Selebi's office", and accused the police chief of "wining and dining the Mafia set".
Agliotti employee Dianne Muller, in an affidavit, said she used to deliver payments in brown paper bags to Selebi. She describes carrying a bag containing the rand equivalent of £8500 into a boardroom where Agliotti and Selebi were waiting. Agliotti took the cash and pushed it across the table, saying: "Here you go, my china."
However, none of this is likely to be tested in court and Selebi might be reinstated as national police chief as a result of the extraordinary events that led to Zuma's great escape.
Zuma's legal team last week presented to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) transcripts of taped telephone conversations between Leonard McCarthy, former chief of the NPA's FBI-style Scorpions investigative wing and now head of the World Bank's anti-corruption unit in Washington, and former NPA director Bulelani Ngcuka, who stepped down in 2003.
Current NPA director Mokotedi Mpshe read the transcripts and decided they had "tainted" the case against Zuma, who was charged on 783 separate counts of corruption, fraud, money laundering, racketeering and tax evasion in relation to the country's £5.5 billion arms deal with BAe and other European weapons manufacturers.
McCarthy and Ngcuka were recorded discussing the best timing of the Zuma prosecution. Crucially, the recordings were made just before the ANC's electoral conference in December 2007 when Zuma challenged president Thabo Mbeki for the leadership of the former liberation movement and won. McCarthy and Ngcuka discussed whether it would be most politically advantageous for the "Big Man in Shell House", who was referred to admiringly several times, for the prosecution of Zuma to begin before or after the ANC conference. The Big Man in Shell House at that time was Mbeki.
Furthermore, since Ngcuka had quit the NPA in 2003 he was at the very least behaving unethically by discussing the case with McCarthy.
Accusing McCarthy and Ngcuka of "manipulation and abuse of (legal) process" Mpshe overrode his own prosecutors' wishes and abandoned the Zuma prosecution. The prosecutors, led by advocate Billy Downer, who had worked on the case for eight years, argued angrily that the Zuma trial should go ahead regardless.
Downer and his team said the tapes referred only to the timing of the prosecution, not whether Zuma was guilty or innocent. A source close to Downer said: "They (Mpshe and his deputy Willie Hofmeyr) have lost their nerve. They've lost their appetite."
Another Downer associate lamented that Mpshe and Hofmeyr would "do anything to secure their future (under a Zuma Presidency). They have previously stated in sworn affidavits that they had a strong case (against Zuma) - unless they were lying under oath".
The decision has enraged political opponents who argue that Mpshe has caved in to heavy political pressure by Zuma and the ANC, and that the rule of law is threatened. Helen Zille, leader of parliament's official opposition Democratic Alliance, vowed that the Zuma issue would never be allowed to rest. She accused Mpshe of portraying Zuma as though he was "a wronged victim in a show trial".
She continued: "All indications are that the National Director of Public Prosecutions has not taken a decision based in law, but that he has buckled to political pressure two weeks before the election ... Zuma has a case to answer."
Zuma now has an unimpeded run to the presidency, but the controversial tapes, which may have been illegally obtained by Zuma's lawyers, also contain telephone discussions between McCarthy and others about the Selebi case. Mpshe's decision that Zuma's case was "tainted" so badly by the McCarthy tapes that his trial had to be terminated has set a precedent that Selebi's lawyers will exploit.
The fall out for South Africa is years of division and controversy. One of the country's top editors, the Financial Mail's Barney Mothombothi, said: "South Africa's attraction has always been that we were the skunk that turned into a beacon of hope for the world. But we've soiled that image. And with the imminent election of Jacob Zuma, the rot will be complete."
