This organogram shows how the various players in Cape Towns underworld are linked.

Links between city brothels, gangs, drugs, nightclubs and businessmen are emerging as underworld figures in Cape Town are rounded up.

With each of their court appearances and through a series of interviews conducted by the Cape Times, information is surfacing, extending a web of notorious associations and dealings in the city.

The role of the police and whether some officers are working with criminals has been questioned, and the extent of illicit dealings in the province and possible ties to a number of other countries is slowly being uncovered.

This week alone, a Russian, Serbian and Moroccan appeared in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court in separate cases.

Through the court appearances and interviews, the Cape Times has established that:

* Igor Russol, best friend of slain underworld kingpin Yuri “the Russian” Ulianitski, was arrested last week and charged after allegedly extorting R650 000 and a Porsche Cayenne from businessmen around the province.

Russol’s co-accused in the extortion case, Kevin Mark Bailey, of Durbanville, let slip during their first court appearance on Monday that he “just had to collect the debt”.

Bailey said he was supposed to have started a business on the same day they appeared in court. He said this business would result in him travelling to China.

Bailey was released on bail under a set of conditions including that he not contact local businessman and State witness Royd Brandon.

About three weeks before his arrest, Russol told the Cape Times that he partially owned several properties in the city. These included former strip clubs, and Russol had explained how foreign women were brought into the country to work at the clubs.

About two weeks ago, Russol’s business, an escort agency in Bree Street named Bedazzled, was shut down.

Russol is currently detained at the Milnerton police station, which, during a previous interview, he said was where officers who were receiving bribes were stationed.

* Underworld kingpin Cyril Beeka was being probed for drug trafficking, illegal diamonds and murder at the time of his assassination in March. He was known for having police connections.

* Houssain Ait Taleb, better known as Houssain Moroccan, previously headed a group of bouncers under Beeka’s notorious club security regime in the 1990s.

He appeared in court this week for allegedly pointing a firearm in a city nightclub.

The charge was dropped.

Taleb, who runs a martial arts academy in Salt River, now works for Specialised Protection Services (SPS), the bouncer company set up after Beeka’s murder and which is an amalgamation of two rival firms, one previously run by Beeka. He recently said he had changed his ways and believed SPS was a good company.

Russol told the Cape Times a few weeks ago that he was concerned about SPS’s emergence and blamed a fight for control over the city’s criminal network for Ulianitski and Beeka’s assassinations.

* André Naudé, an SPS chief executive officer and veteran bouncer who told the Cape Times he makes money by “constructing banks” in Joburg, has consistently denied that the company is involved in criminal activities.

But he said businessmen Mark Lifman and Jerome Booysen backed SPS.

* Lifman was identified as being under investigation for organised crime, while Booysen was named a suspect in Beeka’s murder and a leader of the Sexy Boys gang by investigating officer Paul Hendrikse during the bail application of Serbian fugitive Dobrosav Gavric last month.

In interviews by the Cape Times, Lifman and Booysen were identified as powerful businessmen who own scores of properties, including nightclubs, in the city. The two have declined to be interviewed.

* Booysen, who owns, among other establishments, café Vacca Matta in Edward Street, Bellville, was the last person Beeka, with Gavric, visited before his murder.

* The Sexy Boys gang have a stronghold in Belhar. During Gavric’s bail application, Hendrikse said the Sexy Boys were involved in crimes, especially drugs and prostitution.

* Gavric, who was driving Beeka when he was murdered, appeared in court three times in one day this week.

He faces extradition after being convicted in Serbia for killing a warlord and two others 13 years ago.

During Gavric’s bail application last month, Hendrikse testified that a few weeks before Beeka’s murder, Gavric and Beeka had watched rugby at Newlands in a private booth that was owned by Lifman.

Hendrikse also said Gavric knew Czech fugitive Radovan Krejcir, who is being probed for organised crime in Gauteng. - Cape Times

caryn.dolley@inl.co.za