Death threats, catty SMSes and colourful language pepper security expert Paul O’Sullivan’s legal response to the urgent interdict sought against him by Radovan Krejcir’s legal team.
Last month, the firm representing Krejcir, BDK attorneys, received what it says was a threatening e-mail from O’Sullivan. It promptly applied for an urgent interdict against O’Sullivan. A temporary order was granted.
BDK has labelled O’Sullivan the “architect” of the criminal case against Krejcir, and the e-mail was just one of a series of angry communications between the two sides.
Now, in a long answering affidavit filed with the Joburg High Court, O’Sullivan has detailed a series of profanity-laden interactions between himself, Krejcir and the Czech fugitive’s lawyer, Ian Small-Smith.
In his affidavit, O’Sullivan said he had been threatened on September 10 by a caller, believed to be Krejcir, who greeted him saying: “Hello clown, you want to f*** with me? I will show you who is Radovan. When you will come to South Africa, I will make you suck my c***, then I will kill you, to show you you f***ed with the wrong guy.”
Upon his return to South Africa, O’Sullivan reported the call to the Bramley police station.
On March 1, O’Sullivan said, he received another call from the man he believed was Krejcir, directly after an exchange of SMSes with Small-Smith.
O’Sullivan alleges Small-Smith did not respond seriously to his enquiries about the Krejcir case.
According to his affidavit, Small-Smith responded by SMS saying: “I filed it in my loony bins and I had a great laugh at it at our Xmas party.”
The next death threat was allegedly made a few days later by a caller who rang O’Sullivan’s cellphone and said: “It’s Radovan, you f***ing p***. You f***ing finished, I’m gonna kill you very soon, you f***ing p***.”
The security expert quickly sent an SMS to Small-Smith implying that the lawyer had been behind the threat.
Small-Smith responded: “Assumption is the mother of all f-ups. I called him and he denied it. I am sure you recorded him.”
On March 7, O’Sullivan alleges, Small-Smith threatened him in an e-mail, saying the investigator would soon find himself on the wrong side of the law.
The affidavit, to which Krejcir’s legal team has yet to respond, says Small-Smith was aware of Krejcir’s alleged intention to kill O’Sullivan. One of Small-Smith’s alleged e-mails said in part that O’Sullivan had “manoeuvred (himself) into the position of a ‘marked’ man”.
Krejcir was arrested on March 25 when he handed himself over several days after a police raid on his Bedfordview home.
The court application stems from a March 29 e-mail that O’Sullivan sent to the BDK offices after several lawyers said they had filed an assault complaint against him. The charges relate to an alleged assault on Krejcir associate Michael Arsiotis and his girlfriend, Stacey Swanepoel, who were arrested on the night of the raid on Krejcir’s home.
In the e-mail, O’Sullivan threatened to take “in-your-face actions” against Krejcir’s advocate, Piet du Plessis, saying he would do so in the presence of the advocate’s wife and son. He mentioned Du Plessis’s home address. He referred to the team as “crooked” and “liars” and said he would “leave no stone unturned in ruining” the firm.
Arguments on whether the interdict should be made final were to have been heard yesterday, but O’Sullivan’s affidavit left BDK asking for more time to respond. The temporary order was extended and the hearing postponed to April 26. BDK has until April 21 to respond.
O’Sullivan’s legal representative, Gary Mazaham, said the purpose of the affidavit was to establish the context of the e-mail by showing the previous interactions between BDK and his client, and to argue that there was no violent intent behind the apparently inflammatory words. - Pretoria News