It became a case of talk or die

Radovan Krejcir and his co-accused were found guilty of kidnapping, attempted murder and drug dealing. File picture: Nokuthula Mbatha/Independent Media

Radovan Krejcir and his co-accused were found guilty of kidnapping, attempted murder and drug dealing. File picture: Nokuthula Mbatha/Independent Media

Published Dec 10, 2016

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Angelique Serrao reveals in Krejcir Business As Usual that we haven’t heard the last of one of the most vicious crime bosses South Africa has harboured.

Radovan Krejcir arrived in South Africa in 2007 using a false passport. A fugitive, a powerful Czech multimillionaire, he had escaped from prison on fraud charges and fled to the Seychelles and from there to South Africa to keep one step ahead of Czech police.

He was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport, but allegedly paid a bribe to avoid being arrested and deported.

As a free man he bought a mansion in Bedfordview, holding court at a local restaurant eating and drinking with known criminals and senior police officers, making bloody deals and signing virtual death warrants. But it was the ruthless murder of Lolly Jackson that would make Krejcir’s name headline news.

Today he is in jail, convicted of kidnapping, attempted murder and attempted drug possession. He faces more charges of murder and conspiring to murder against associates, informers and police officers. But as Angelique Serrao reveals in Krejcir Business As Usual, we haven’t heard the last of one of the most vicious crime bosses South Africa has harboured.

Jacob Nare was gambling with his life. He knew it, but had no choice: it was either talk to the cops or die in a shoot-out when the police come knocking. He had to act. So he contacted Colonel Bongani Gininda.

He prayed he had made the right choice, that this cop was clean. That he wasn’t one of the many in Krejcir’s pay. So, every day after he met Gininda, he waited for the call to come revealing that he had sold out his best friend. He listened every time he heard his friend’s phone ring. Was this the call that would finally end it all?

Would his duplicity be revealed? Would he die that day? He listened to everything the men living in his flat said – the gang that worked for Krejcir, who were in the bedroom next to his.

They were armed to the teeth, AK-47s at the ready in case the police showed up. They were determined they would not be arrested. At night Jacob Nare could not sleep. His mind spun with what would happen. Would he die that night?

Jacob Nare is not his real name, but it is the name you will see printed in newspapers as one of the members of the gang arrested for planning to kill Paul O’Sullivan and Colonel Nkosana Ximba.

The fake name was an attempt to keep his identity hidden – because he was the police’s informer, the man who, through his bravery, saved the lives of O’Sullivan and Ximba.

He didn’t set out to be a hero. He was just an ordinary man who made the wrong friends and was forced to make a difficult decision. This is his story, which he revealed in affidavits and in an interview with me.

It started in 2004 when he met Siboniso Miya. They were teenagers, firm friends, who saw each other every day. Miya became a businessman, a taxi owner. Things were generally going well for both men, until Miya met a man called Phumlani Ncube in January 2013, about 10 months before Krejcir and his co-accused were arrested. The three men met for lunch. Ncube said he was looking for a guy who could do a hit on some white guy in Bedfordview.

Krejcir Business As Usual by Angelique Serrao, published by Jonathan Ball Publishers at a recommended retail price of R250.

The man they wanted dead was Krejcir. The man who wanted him dead, a Sandton businessman, was paying good money – R500 000 for the whole thing. Miya was interested. But instead of following through on the job, Miya and Ncube went to Krejcir and told him they had been hired to kill him. Krejcir then promised them better money to take the hit back.

The Sandton businessman was killed. Nare said Miya was open about what he was doing, that he bragged about it and would put Krejcir on speaker phone, so that whoever was there could hear their conversations. He said Miya and Ncube did a few jobs for Krejcir, including a project robbing people of Krugerrand, which led to a misunderstanding between them. Ncube took some of the Krugerrand for himself. Miya told his friends he wanted to take over Ncube’s job. Ncube was No.1 with Krejcir, and Miya wanted that position. It meant more money, fancier cars and prestige. Eventually it happened when he took out Ncube. Nare said Ncube was killed because Krejcir found out a witness dropped from State protection was talking to Colonel Ximba. He was giving information to crime intelligence.

They allegedly found out from a policewoman in crime intelligence, Nandi Nkosi, who gave Krejcir information. Nkosi was later arrested with the rest of the gang. Miya was wanted by police at that stage for the kidnapping and torture of Bheki Lukhele. Every time the police set up a search for him, Nkosi would warn Miya.

“A friend of his called me, asking if I knew where Siboniso was. He told me Siboniso had killed Phumlani the day before.” Nare said he then realised how dangerous his friend was. Nare also found out about other killings.

On one occasion, Miya was calculating how much money Krejcir owed him. He was working from a list that Nare could see and the name Zak was on it. He heard Miya telling fellow gang member Nkanyiso Mafunda he had sent a coloured guy called Ziggies to kill this guy Zak, but that they had not done the job properly as they had not killed him. Said Nare: “I heard Mafunda say, ‘You should have given the job to me, it would have been done properly.’ I also remember Miya saying to Mafunda that a certain car had to be parked up and not used, as it had been used in the ‘Sandhurst job’. I took that to mean the car had been used to try and kill Zak, by Ziggies.”

Nare also heard about the plan to kill Sam Issa.

These kind of incidents began to escalate and Nare was becoming increasingly involved in Miya’s world of crime. Miya told Nare that a man would be coming to put a tracker into the Ranger.

“I came down to check on him and I saw the car flashing. I asked the man what the lights were and he told me he had just installed blue lights in the car, in my basement, where anyone could have seen.” Nare said Miya used the blue lights regularly. “We passed cops and he flashed the lights to the police,” he said.

“They would wave at him. Siboniso had everything that made him look like police. He got the police appointment cards from Durban, bulletproof vests and bullets from a TRT (Tactical Response Team) officer girlfriend and the blue lights.”

Just before Issa’s murder, Nare said Miya asked him if he could buy two SIM cards for him. He put one in a small machine and one in a Samsung S4. Nare was told the machine was a tracking device that synced the phone.

It had been supplied to Krejcir by crime intelligence, Nare said. The tracker was attached to the petrol tank of Issa’s car with a magnet. After Issa was killed, Miya went to Nare’s house. He said they had just done a job for the boss and he went to sleep.

At 3pm Nare heard about Issa’s murder on the news. Miya told him they would never find the Ranger. They had parked it at the house of a cop. Miya and two other men he worked with then moved in with Nare because they were wanted by police. “I had a two-bedroom apartment and I was accommodating all of them.”

The men were taxi bosses and their drivers would arrive to hand them the day’s takings.

Nare said the security guards at his complex were asking who these guys were because men were continually coming and giving them money. “I had a problem with that. I told Siboniso that I could not live with his friends.”

They reacted angrily, telling Miya that if Nare wasn’t their friend they would give him an AK-47 – meaning they would kill him. They came back to the house every day carrying bags with their AK-47s inside. They said they would never be arrested. Those AKs were for the cops.”

* This is an extract from Krejcir Business As Usual by Angelique Serrao, published by Jonathan Ball Publishers at a recommended retail price of R250.

Author fact file

Angelique Serrao is the former investigations editor at The Star. A multi-award-winning journalist, some of her high-profile stories include the e-toll investigation, the Wendy Machanik estate agency fraud and the Dave Sheer Guns scandal. In 2014, she co-wrote The E-Toll Saga with Wayne Duvenage. Today, she works as an investigative journalist at Media24.

Saturday Star

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