Can't see the drugs for the trees

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Selebi pleads not guilty

Selebi is facing two charges of cor...

I paid Selebi R1m - Agliotti

Agliotti was paid R100 000 by SAPS ...

Will Glenn Agliotti's rough life in drug trafficking be fully exposed in Jackie Selebi's trial?

"Bollocks!" is what a good Irish friend of mine would say if he heard this story. Here we have a convicted drugs trafficker, under oath, in a Johannesburg superior court, testifying that he gave bundles of bank notes to the one-time national police commissioner, also one-time head of Interpol, the international police outfit. A law enforcement officer who receives truly large amounts of cash from anyone other than the state, his employer, is not going to have a pretty ride.

Both characters are playing the media like they're playing grand pianos. The cute and cuddly convicted drugs trafficker, Glenn Agliotti, is due to appear in a trial early next year on charges of conspiracy to murder, and the murder of, Brett Kebble, on September 27 2005. It is for the court to decide whether a belligerent, fuming Jackie Selebi, once the top cop, is guilty of corruption, for allegedly accepting more than R1m in cash from Agliotti and others, and defeating the ends of justice, for allegedly providing Agliotti with information about foreign law enforcement agency investigations into Agliotti's global drug trafficking activities.

One of the central - but unflagged - issues in the Selebi trial is whether the truth will come out about a drugs bust made in Kya Sands, just north of Johannesburg, in January 2002. The truth about the bust is known, to some, but Agliotti has managed to give it a bend and twist all of his own. Agliotti's drug trafficking conviction relates to another bust, made in June 2006, east of Johannesburg, where a haul of hundreds of millions of rands of good stuff, mainly hashish, was uncovered.

Sadly, that matter never went to trial; in a plea-bargain, Agliotti simply pleaded guilty and was convicted in November 2007. With any luck, the trial now on show will see the true, and inside story of the first deal, disclosed. There are fascinating, and horribly sinister, links between the two drug busts, but these are highly unlikely to reach the public domain during the Selebi trial, if ever.

There are huge drug deals going through South Africa as you read this. As always, it is instructive to know which individuals are doing which deals, and for what amounts. South Africa currently ranks as one of the world's most important drug centres and conduits. Just last month, law enforcement grabbed R500m worth of illicit drugs in Durban. The shipments were apparently destined for the UK, where a week previously law enforcement grabbed an eye-popping 165kg of heroine concealed in curios shipped from South Africa. In North America, this stuff sells for between $65 000 and $112 000 a kilogram, depending on the grade - and that's at the wholesale level.

In South Africa, cannabis seizures are the third biggest in the world after the US and Mexico. Methamphetamine ("tik" here; "crank", "meth", "ice", "crystal", etc, in the US) manufacture in Southern Africa continues to grow, if not explode; the country now ranks as one of the world's largest importers of licit ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, the main raw material needed for cooking out methamphetamine, using red phosphorus and blue iodine.

Africa's economy may have found something of a saviour. In September 2006, authorities in mud-infested Guinea-Bissau seized 670kg of cocaine. Two Latin Americans were apprehended, but were soon freed; the cocaine consignment, quite naturally, disappeared. On May 1 2007, traffickers were bust unloading 630kg of cocaine from a Cessna 441 turboprop at the airport in Nouhabidou, a small coastal town up near Morocco, in Mauritania. This spectacular flight, from an airstrip in Venezuela, was made by a Cessna 441, the first Cessna turboprop, unveiled in 1977. Big balls, big flight.

In April 2007, police in Guinea-Bissau seized 635kg of cocaine, but traffickers escaped with the remainder of the consignment (believed to be about 2 500kg), which had been flown into a military airstrip. Police do not have the manpower or vehicles. Besides, whoever is bust on the ground, mules and the like, there is a big name behind every big drugs shipment.

Write to Barry Sergeant: barry@moneyweb.co.za

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