Former ANC MP Vincent Smith was sentenced to an effective seven years in prison for Bosasa corruption.
Graphic: Sharlene Rood/News24. Image: Lulama Zenzile/Beeld/Gallo Images.
On a Saturday eight years ago, I pulled up outside a house belonging to Vincent Smith, then an ANC MP, in Florida Lake, a suburb in Roodepoort.
It was 1 September 2018. I had called Smith earlier that week to ask him about evidence in my possession showing that Bosasa had, through intermediaries, deposited money into the bank account of his company, Euro Blitz.
He had also taken cash monthly, I had been told. But proving that would be impossible.
I had also seen CCTV footage showing Bosasa employees removing cameras from Smith’s home eight months earlier, the same cameras that had been installed by Bosasa several years prior, free of charge. I knew the cameras had been installed by Bosasa, too.
It was potentially a massive story. Smith had chaired the parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services, which oversees the same department that had awarded Bosasa contracts worth billions of rands.
His oversight role was meant to hold to account the same correctional services employees who were also on the Bosasa take. But his interest in Bosasa waned, and between 2009 and 2014, under his stewardship, the committee never tackled the department, despite evidence of tender irregularities and a Special Investigating Unit probe that had found evidence of bribes paid to senior Department of Correctional Services officials.
READ | Ex-ANC MP Vincent Smith jailed for 7 years for Bosasa kickbacks, tax fraud
Dennis Bloem, the chairperson of the committee before Smith, had specifically flagged the Bosasa matters for further attention by the committee in his handover report in 2009.
News24 editor-in-chief Adriaan Basson, then an investigative reporter at the Mail & Guardian, had already exposed Bosasa as a corruption machine.
The public knew, Parliament knew, and Smith knew – but he got into bed with the company anyway, Bosasa head honcho Gavin Watson’s struggle connections to the ANC paving the way.
To me, that day in his yard in Roodepoort, he denied that he met with Watson every month at the Mugg & Bean at Clearwater Mall to collect his R100 000 in cash.
It was “total crap,” he said.
At the time, the evidence against Smith was part of a larger investigation we had started into Bosasa based on a trove of documents, screenshots and interviews with a whistleblower. We had evidence of widespread bribery and breathtaking corruption.
READ | Devastating indictment sets out how Vincent Smith’s opposition to Bosasa in Parliament waned
I already had evidence that ANC leaders Gwede Mantashe, Nomvula Mokonyane and Thabang Makwetla and former chief magistrate in Pretoria Desmond Nair had also received gifts of similar systems.
Nair, too, is on trial for this and other gratifications he received from Bosasa.
Just over R670 000 was paid into the account of Smith’s company, and I had already spoken to the Bosasa employee who had been sent to the bank to deposit the cash. I had the videos of Bosasa staff removing the cameras.
A picture of one of the staff members showed him installing cameras at Mantashe’s house in Cala in the Eastern Cape. Mantashe – who was ANC secretary-general at the time – had received the same gifts at three of his properties: the Cala house, a house on his nearby farm and his home in Boksburg.
Gwede Mantashe outside his house in Cala during a press tour in February 2019. Bosasa installed cameras at this property, as well as a house on his nearby farm and his home in Boksburg.
I had also already made contact with the Bosasa employee who had made the deposits at an FNB in Krugersdorp.
He confirmed that Angelo Agrizzi, the Bosasa chief operations officer, had handed him the cash and the account number. I had Smith dead to rights.
“I’ve got nothing to hide, I am just pissed off,” Smith declared, as he tried to explain it all away.
He told me he thought Agrizzi was loaning him the money out of his own pocket, as he needed the cash to pay for his daughter’s university fees in the UK. But I already knew it was Bosasa money.
I rushed home to write what I had that afternoon, and it was published the next day on News24 and in print in City Press.
A week later, we revealed that Mantashe and Mokonyane had been at the receiving end of similar largesse.
Two years later in October 2020, Smith was arrested alongside Agrizzi, whose own trial on these charges is still ongoing.
On Thursday, the court confirmed a plea deal on charges of corruption, fraud and money laundering and sentenced the 65-year-old Smith to an effective seven years in prison.
READ | Vincent Smith arrest paves way for high-profile Bosasa corruption accused politicians to face music
For years, Smith had maintained his innocence – as he had done that day at his house to me. But his plea confirms what we have known for the past eight years – Bosasa corrupted him.
The Smith case represents the very first major arrest undertaken by the Investigating Directorate, which has proved its dedication to seeing this case through to the end.
Now it must prove it has the stomach for the big guns – and take on Mantashe and Mokonyane.
