Tobacco Wars. Johann van Loggerenberg
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fierce competition and hostility from the ‘big boys’ and at the same time they became involved in all sorts of tussles with law enforcement agencies and SARS. Highway Hennie found himself in trouble with the state in the early 2000s in a court case that is still ongoing. One of Carnilinx’s directors was linked in the media to a cocaine dealer who was wanted by Interpol, and GLTC had a run in or two with the Directorate of Special Operations, better known as the Scorpions. Craig Williamson of Benson Craig was a notorious apartheid spy and self-confessed assassin, while the Zimbabwean John Bredenkamp was alleged to have been a sanctions-buster and arms trader. All of these reputational issues gave great ammunition to their commercial competitors for use as part of their propaganda campaign to make out the ‘independents’ as organised criminals. For the rise of the independents presented a worrying development to the established big names. In fact, the battle became vicious and ugly.
One law enforcement effort that the newcomers faced came in the form of the Illicit Tobacco Task Team, sometimes called the Tobacco Task Team. The primary agencies involved in this team were the Hawks (Directorate of Priority Crime Investigations), the South African Police Service’s Crime Intelligence division, the State Security Agency (SSA) and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). Significantly, SARS was never formally included as a member.
The origins of the team lie in a meeting held in November 2010 at the request of the head of the State Security Agency, Gibson Njenje, who had called for an extraordinary meeting between the heads of various components of the criminal justice system. Those invited included the Asset Forfeiture Unit’s Willie Hofmeyr, Hawks head Lieutenant General Anwa Dramat, Financial Intelligence Centre manager Murray Michell and SARS deputy commissioner Ivan Pillay.12 Njenje first met with a SARS delegation, before the main meeting was to start. Here an SSA official, Ferdi Fryer, the acting head of the agency’s Economic Intelligence Unit, presented a report claiming to have evidence of corruption by senior members of SARS. I, together with another senior SARS official, was present with Pillay at this meeting. We had come prepared, as we’d been tipped off in September that year by persons within the tobacco industry of efforts under way to use the intelligence services, the Hawks and NPA to discredit SARS and its investigators looking at the tobacco industry. We had recordings of these tip-offs, certain documents to prove the claims and even evidence that R600,000 had been set aside to ‘influence’ the NPA and Hawks to discredit officials at SARS.13
Pillay took the opportunity in the short meeting with Njenje to propose the formation of a multi-agency task team. Fryer hastily removed his presentation, and instead the meeting revolved primarily around seeking consensus on the view that the tobacco industry presented a big challenge to the South African fiscus, and that all enforcement agencies should work together to tackle the problems involved. Nobody disagreed, as the proposal made absolute sense. In effect, it was here that the Illicit Tobacco Task Team was formed.14 In December 2010, a month later, I and another senior SARS official met Fryer, and took him through all our tobacco-related projects and cases we were involved in. It was understood that Fryer would act as the primary go-between between all agencies in the establishment of the task team. We did not hold back, and Fryer likely received the most detailed and insightful briefing on the tobacco industry he would ever hear. It was all hail-fellow-well-met, but after this meeting, I would never see the man again. When he left us with some files under his arm, we hoped we would meet him again at the first joint session once he had conducted similar exercises with the other agencies, but such hope soon faded. What I subsequently learned from the grapevine was that the team had ultimately been established, but SARS was never invited to attend any of their meetings.
It seems that as it was constituted, the team had as its head an informal group of law enforcement officials who basically determined its activities and investigations. The team was overseen by a Hawks officer, Brigadier Casper Jonker, who had once been a detective engaged in primarily white-collar crime investigations. His close colleagues were Crime Intelligence police officer Lt Colonel Hennie Niemann and, initially, Ferdi Fryer, who was soon replaced by Fryer’s second-in-charge, Chris Burger. Advocate Johan van Heerden was the main representative of the National Prosecuting Authority and Warrant-Officer Willie Schreiber represented the detective service. These were the main people on the task team.15
My criticism of this task team was no secret, nor was their dislike of me. I held the view that they pandered to the interests of BATSA and TISA only, often at the expense of smaller and local tobacco manufacturers while ignoring evidence that implicated TISA members and their agents. I took issue with the way they operated, their collusion with the multinationals and their agents, and the element of corruption I came to discover that resulted from this incestuous relationship.16 Some people in this team, in turn, accused me of being obstructionist and of not wanting to help them. Others seemed to want to believe rumours that I was corrupt and there were several attempts made to try to find ‘dirt’ on me. By the end of 2013 and the start of 2014, the task team seemed more preoccupied in activities relating to this than their real work. It was laughable at first, and then turned serious rather quickly. The animosity between us was palpable, so much so that in February 2014, in total exasperation, I called a meeting with the SAPS head of detectives, Lt General Vinesh Moonoo, and Hawks boss Lt General Anwa Dramat, to try to broker some kind of truce between us. This didn’t really result in much, because Moonoo in his wisdom brought Brigadier Jonker along, without apparently realising what he was doing, and I had to hold my punches.17
It seemed to me there was mounting evidence that pointed to what some academics refer to as the ‘regulatory capture’ of the Illicit Tobacco Task Team. This practice refers to the ways in which private corporations with significant influence, surreptitiously and ever so slowly, begin to direct and influence the way in which state agencies and their officials operate in order to advance their own agendas. I was convinced that this had happened to this task team and had said so on many occasions. This certainly did not endear me to the task team or some of the TISA members. Long before ‘state capture’ became a common term on the lips of South Africans, I used it to describe the relationship between multinational tobacco companies and the task team. I said outright that some of their officials had been captured and were serving the interests of the big boys. Time would prove me right.
The evidence suggesting all was not well at the Illicit Tobacco Task Team began piling up to support my views. When SARS, in terms of Project Honey Badger, sought to look at all role-players in the tobacco industry, across the value chain, and uncover all sorts of malfeasance, the task team would hear nothing of it, especially where TISA members were concerned. The growing evidence that TISA and a private security firm in the employ of TISA and BATSA, Forensic Security Services (FSS), participated in driving and directing some of their cases concerned me greatly. There are unfortunately some facts which I am unable to divulge publicly for legal reasons, but there is enough I can mention here to prove my point. Firstly, it was common knowledge that representatives of BATSA and FSS, through TISA, attended planning meetings and sessions of the task team, where they seemingly got to influence the law enforcement agenda. One of those who attended these closed meetings was Martin Potgieter, who was officially an employee of BATSA, but had been seconded to TISA, acting as their law enforcement liaison. Allegedly, BATSA’s presence gave it access to state intelligence and the ability to help determine whom the law enforcement agencies should target, among them its direct competitors. According to one source, a senior member of BAT plc, Allan Evans, even went so far as to present a detailed proposal for the investigation of a commercial competitor, Gold Leaf Tobacco Corporation (GLTC).18
Another matter emerged in the public domain years after it had occurred. After SARS had detained trucks of a transporter, a South African subsidiary of the London-based company Lonrho, named Rollex, SARS wanted to conduct a raid on its premises but was halted by formal requests emanating from members of the task team. Only years later would I come to learn that Fryer and one of his informants had flown to London, and made a presentation to the Lonrho board alleging how ‘corrupt’ SARS was and claiming that its officials were not to be trusted.19
In another matter, which took place in 2013, a heavily armed police team, together with members of the elite police task force, descended upon the premises of local tobacco manufacturer Amalgamated Tobacco Manufacturers (ATM) in Pietermaritzburg. More about this raid will be given in a later chapter. Suffice to say that although complaints were made by the proprietor of