By Eleanor Momberg
Paul O'Sullivan is the man whose tenacity, scorn, and what some have described as his unrestrained desire for revenge, led to the prosecution of former top cop Jackie Selebi. It also led to the collapse of the criminal empire headed by Selebi's friend Glen Agliotti - he of "finish and klaar" fame - and the near solving of the murder of mining tycoon Brett Kebble.
The no-holds-barred battle between O'Sullivan and Selebi is the stuff of thrillers - and, a movie there is to be, apparently featuring top Hollywood stars. The script is readymade for what some may call "The Agent vs The Commissioner".
O'Sullivan has been a man on a mission since 2001, when he and Selebi first butted heads. That mission saw him hand over about 1 000 pages of what is now known as the O'Sullivan dossier to the now defunct Scorpions.
In the dossier, containing the findings of his own investigations, he described Selebi's alleged corrupt activities, once sketching the gang headed by Agliotti as "the most devastating crime syndicate in the country's history". Some of it was leaked to the media. He once said a reader of the dossier would "see that I put 90 percent of the state's case together". It was Agliotti who filled in the rest when he was arrested in connection with Kebble's murder.
Now that Selebi is the accused in an explosive trial in the Johannesburg High Court, O'Sullivan - the man Selebi blames for his predicament - feels vindicated.
The body language said it all. With apparent disdain, Selebi glared at his nemesis from the witness box as he explained the origins of their animosity, while O'Sullivan smiled and laughed as the former diplomat-turned-disgraced cop spoke about him.
O'Sullivan once remarked that Selebi should be sent to prison "where he belongs".
He also said that in the decade Selebi was police chief, thousands of people were raped and murdered. "Yet he has breakfast with the Mafia, lunch with money launderers and supper with fraudsters, and drives around in a car and driver paid for by the victims of crime to collect his dirty bags of dirty money."
Selebi hit back at the start of his testimony, saying the problems between the two started when he objected to senior police officers in full uniform being subjected to full body searches at what was then called Johannesburg International Airport, where Sullivan was the head of security. During a meeting to discuss this in 2001, O'Sullivan produced his police reserves appointment certificate.
That membership was terminated soon after on the grounds of conflict of interest.
Selebi testified that O'Sullivan believed his termination as a police reservist could have happened only on Selebi's instruction, and that he had lost his job at the Airports Company SA (Acsa) because of Selebi.
This was a vendetta, said Selebi.
Selebi admitted in court papers that he had had O'Sullivan removed from his post at Acsa.
In the same year O'Sullivan started sending Selebi, deputy national police commissioner André Pruis, and police spokespersons Sally de Beer, Vish Naidoo and Selby Bokaba e-mails in which he allegedly threatened them and their families. In the e-mails, Selebi said, he made "the most terrible allegations" against them and anyone who was connected to Selebi.
Bokaba and Naidoo laid charges of sending death threats against O'Sullivan after he allegedly described them as "sewer rats" and "gutless pieces of excrement", and he hoped that their houses would be robbed and their wives raped.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has declined to prosecute these charges because of insufficient evidence.
Bokaba said last week that he would apply for a review of the decision.
Selebi said he believed that if O'Sullivan had a chance "to do anything to me or to anyone associated with me, he would have".
O'Sullivan, according to Selebi, has an "unbalanced type of hatred" towards him.
Despite stating in a May 2006 letter to the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD), the police watchdog, and to then-minister of safety and security Charles Nqakula, that "I shall not hesitate to use maximum force against any person (who) attempts to do any act that I consider life threatening", O'Sullivan had denied issuing any death threats, saying it was he who was the target.
Those threats, he said, became so serious that he had to move his family out of the country.
He has argued that the personal cost of the past few years has been high, and that there was a risk of him being arrested, unlike the "gangsters in uniform".
O'Sullivan is adamant: he never threatened anyone, and the e-mails in which he was alleged to have threatened Selebi's allies were fabricated. Proof of this, he said, had been provided to the NPA.
The story of O'Sullivan's battle against Selebi goes back to when the naturalised South African of Irish descent, in his capacity as head of security at the airport, wanted to fire Khuselani Security, owned by Selebi's friend Noel Ngwenya, for poor service after a series of security breaches. This raised the ire of not only Ngwenya, but also senior Acsa officials who had wanted Khuselani to see out the remaining R130 million of its contract.
After giving Khuselani notice to vacate the airport, O'Sullivan claimed to have received warnings that Selebi and Ngwenya were conspiring to get rid of him, and he was informed by the police chief that the police would be taking over security at the airport.
He also claimed in a report to the Scorpions and the ICD that he was intimidated by Acsa managing director Monhla Hlahla, appointed after the Khuselani contract was terminated, and Gauteng police chief Perumal Naidoo, into withdrawing his complaint of intimidation and attempted murder against Selebi. O'Sullivan was suspended in 2002 after he gave the taxman information linking Ngwenya to fraud that led to his being sentenced for more than 15 years.
He was later reinstated, only to be dismissed by Hlahla on grounds of "irreconcilable differences" in 2003 after he allegedly flouted air traffic regulations by flying an unscheduled private aircraft.
O'Sullivan claimed that he was unlawfully dismissed because he uncovered fraud, drug and human trafficking, smuggling and other crimes at the airport. In 2008 he launched a lawsuit against Selebi, Nqakula, Hlahla and Acsa, claiming R42m for pain, suffering and loss of income.
In court papers, O'Sullivan claimed that Selebi "conspired and acted in concert" with Hlahla to have him fired and publicly discredited. It was an allegation he has repeated often since his dismissal.
Since then, he said, he has been unemployable. Calculating how much money he would have earned before retiring at 65 in the year 2020, he was claiming R36.5m in special damages and R6m for "pain, suffering and loss of reputation".
Selebi and O'Sullivan have different backgrounds. While Selebi was in exile, O'Sullivan was buying properties in South Africa.
O'Sullivan finally settled here and became a naturalised South African citizen in 1994 - to enjoy the fruits of the struggle waged by Selebi.
O'Sullivan said he came to South Africa as a person of independent means, leaving his partnership in a property business in London. The qualified engineer and businessman is also a licensed fraud investigator who has spent most of his life savings on his probe of the underworld and Selebi.
While it is believed that he is down to his last "few crumbs", the making of a movie about his battle to prove that the police were involved in organised crime could see him pocketing R1.5m.
O'Sullivan has conceded that he was an MI6 (UK spy) agent 30 years ago, but Selebi remains adamant that O'Sullivan has remained an active agent. "I was not then and never have been a spy. My area of speciality was counter-espionage and counterterrorism, period.
"And I was very good at it. So much so that I still consult around the world on counter-terrorism," O'Sullivan has said.
Selebi told journalists in November 2006 that O'Sullivan was a foreign spy bent on destabilising the country. For O'Sullivan this was an opportunity to draw attention to the "lies" Selebi told.
In his letter to Nqakula and the ICD he said: "I have no doubt that, with a little more passage of time, my fellow citizens will thank me for the great hardship I have suffered as a result of the criminal conduct of Selebi and his cronies and my unwavering actions in bringing them to book.
When that time comes, and I believe it is not far away, perhaps you will consider if there was anything you could have done to stop the dwindling spiral Selebi and his like are taking this country into."
- The Selebi trial continues.