Suspected members of the so-called Big Five cartel may have been involved in unlawful activities, among other alleged crimes.
Evidence presented before the Madlanga Commission shows that the late taxi boss Mswazi Msibi and businessmen Steve Motsomi, Ignatius Mthakathi and Katiso Molefe may have been involved in the unlawful sourcing and sale of signal jammers and grabbers — devices the commission believes may not be intended for civilian use.
In the absence of a witness, Evidence Leader Mathew Chasckolson used WhatsApp chats between Sergeant Fannie Nkosi and the late taxi boss Mswazi Msibi to support the allegation that they may have been dealing in prohibited equipment.
“The first issue that I want to address is a project that seems to involve, at different stages, Mr Msibi, Mr Katiso Molefe and Mr Steven Motsomi, involved in dealing in grabbers. Grabbers are technology that enables you to eavesdrop on cell phones and extract information from cell phones, and the starting point for this topic is Mr Nkosi’s chats — sorry, Sergeant Nkosi’s chats,” said Chasckolson, explaining what he believed the chats revealed.
While the inquiry is yet to establish whether the equipment, sourced from the Czech Republic, was purely for sale or whether the group intended to use it to commit crimes, it expressed concern that the equipment could end up in the hands of civilians.
Commissioner Sisi Baloyi engaged the Evidence Leader in a question-and-answer session to establish what the group may have been planning.
B: You’re not an expert in this. I’m trying to wrap my head around a jammer. I think I’ve understood how a grabber would work. A jammer would do what? Block communications?
C: For criminal activity. Well, I mean, at a very low level, a jammer stops your remote control from locking your car when you get out of the car. So a lot of small-time criminals have access to jammers which are used — and I’m sure some of us have had that experience — you get out of your car, you think you’ve locked it, but you haven’t because the signal’s been jammed, and someone steals something from your car while you’ve gone into the shop.
At a much larger scale, a jammer can block communications. It can stop people communicating on their cell phones. It essentially blocks communications that depend on operating at particular frequencies. It could block law enforcement from listening in.
The commission is yet to determine how far the project went, or whether it is ongoing, but it has already uncovered a plan to sell the devices to the governments of neighbouring countries, with the group reportedly having almost succeeded in selling them to the Kingdom of Eswatini, which has faced criticism over the suppression of civil rights.
It would also appear, at least based on the profile the group created to execute the project, that South African state-owned entities were also earmarked as a target market.