South Africa’s ex-national police chief found guilty in long-running corruption case

S.Africa’s ex-top cop found guilty of corruption

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s former national police chief was convicted of corruption Friday after a nation beset by crime heard months of testimony about its top cop going on designer shopping sprees with a convicted drug smuggler.

The case against Jackie Selebi, a one-time president of Interpol, has been a chief exhibit in a national debate over whether corruption and political meddling is undermining the fight against crime. South Africa’s rates of murder and assault are among the world’s highest.

Selebi, 60, showed little reaction as the verdict was read, and told reporters he had nothing to say as he left the central Johannesburg courthouse. He was not asked to post bail and is free until his sentence is determined in hearings set to start July 14.

Selebi, once an important official in the governing African National Congress, had pleaded innocent. He claimed evidence was fabricated for the charge he accepted money and gifts in exchange for meeting the drug smuggler’s business associates and tipping him off to investigations into his crimes.

Selebi argued he was targeted by enemies who wanted to punish him for his criticism of an elite and now defunct crime-fighting unit. The unit attached to the national prosecutor’s office — setting up clashes with police — was known as the Scorpions and disbanded in 2008 after it tried to prosecute Jacob Zuma on corruption charges before he went on to become South Africa’s president.

Judge Meyer Joffe, in delivering the verdict, said Selebi’s conspiracy theory had no basis, and that the former police chief showed “complete contempt for the truth” during the trial.

The red-robed Joffe said ruling a witness was not credible “stigmatizes the person as a liar and a person of low moral fiber.

“Every day, society in general and the courts in particular rely on the honesty, integrity and truthfulness of police men and women,” Joffe said. Selebi has “not set an example that should be emulated.”

Johan Burger, a researcher with the independent Institute for Security Studies and a former assistant commissioner in the South African police force, said corruption appeared to be on the rise in the force. But Burger said that was hard to document because Selebi disbanded the police anti-corruption unit soon after he took over the force in 2000.

Burger said a public concerned about crime will be left questioning how Selebi was able to get away with wrongdoing for years.

“Although the fact that in the end justice prevailed should in many ways address some of the skepticism in the public’s mind,” Burger said.

Burger said many on the force saw Selebi as an outsider imposed on them by the ANC.

Selebi was a former school teacher who in his youth was twice detained without trial for his anti-apartheid activism. He went into exile in Tanzania and later the Soviet Union, where he underwent military training. After apartheid ended in 1994, he was a member of the first all-race parliament, and later served as the envoy to the U.N. in Geneva.

Selebi is just one of many prominent ANC members tainted by corruption. In a brief statement Friday, the party said the Selebi case “clearly indicates that South Africa as a country is governed by laws that are applied without any fear or favor to anyone, regardless of their standing.”

The main opposition Democratic Alliance said it was “time for the many other senior ANC politicians, not least President Jacob Zuma, who still have unanswered questions about corruption hanging over their heads, to also have their day in court.”

Last April, weeks before Zuma led the party to victory in national elections, top prosecutors dropped corruption charges against Zuma, saying the case had been tainted by political meddling.

South Africa comes in 55th out of 180 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, based on surveys of businesses and experts. That means South Africa is seen as less corrupt as places like Greece, Thailand and Zimbabwe, but worse than Botswana, at 37th the highest-ranking African country.

While convicted of corruption, Selebi was found not guilty on the second charge he faced, defeating the ends of justice.

The star witness in the trial, which began last October, was convicted drug smuggler Glenn Agliotti. Agliotti himself faces trial later this year, accused in the 2005 murder of mining magnate and ANC financier Brett Kebble. Agliotti has pleaded not guilty to the charge, claiming the death was an assisted suicide.

Prosecutors have said that in return for more than 1 million rand ($130,000 U.S.) in cash and gifts over the years, Selebi did favors for Agliotti, including letting him see documents British police sent to their South African counterparts linking Agliotti to drug smuggling.

Prosecutors said Agliotti took Selebi shopping at upscale stores in Johannesburg and London, paying for suits, shirts, ties and shoes. Agliotti also bought items for Selebi’s sons, wife and girlfriend, prosecutors alleged.