Forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan
Image: HENK KRUGER
Forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan is expected to tell the Madlanga Commission that a police colonel allegedly received money from convicted criminal Radovan Krejcir and later leaked his private cellphone records.
Krejcir is a Czech fugitive who fled his home country in 2005 and settled in SA two years later.
He became one of the most feared figures in the local underworld.
He is serving an effective 35-year term after a Johannesburg court convicted him in 2015 of attempted murder, kidnapping, and drug dealing.
O'Sullivan said Colonel Francois Steyn took a R408,000 loan from Krejcir into his home loan account.
He said Steyn then leaked his private cellphone records to the gangster, at a time when Krejcir was trying to have him killed.
The claim formed part of a sworn statement O'Sullivan handed to the commission.
Steyn appeared before the commission on May 11.
O'Sullivan said he could not believe what he was watching.
"I was truly shocked when I saw him testifying at the commission," O'Sullivan said in the statement.
"I could not believe that years ago, Colonel Steyn was working for a drug trafficker, and now he claims to be working against such people."
O'Sullivan said the leak of his phone records was serious because Krejcir wanted him dead, and knowing who he was calling and when could have put lives at risk.
He said the threat was real and he could prove where it came from.
In the statement, he described a meeting at the Harbour Restaurant at Bedford Centre.
A friend of his, who he said had been helping him watch a house where Krejcir was hiding, was summoned there by the gangster.
He claimed a police colonel in full uniform sat at the table.
O'Sullivan quoted the friend's account of what Krejcir did next.
"He leaned over the table and put his forefinger to my forehead and said, 'If I find out you are lying, I can put a bullet through your head right there.'.
"Sambo just sat there and kept quiet."
The Sambo in that account, O'Sullivan said, was then the station commander of the Bedfordview police station.
O'Sullivan said that was the main point of his evidence, adding that Krejcir did not act alone but was backed by police officers in uniform who stood by while he allegedly threatened to execute a man.
He said the same officers later helped to harass and arrest him.
Krejcir still faces trial over what O'Sullivan said were several attempts on his own life.
O'Sullivan traced the Krejcir web back to a human trafficking investigation he was running into strip clubs.
He said young women were brought in from Eastern Europe, had their passports taken, and were forced into the sex trade to pay off "loans" for their flights and rent.
That trail, he said, led him to Krejcir.
It also led him to a general.
O'Sullivan said he discovered that the wife of crime intelligence boss Major General Joey Mabasa and Krejcir's wife were co-directors of the same company.
He said the company's registered address was the same house where a kidnapped German businessman was held and murdered in 2010.
Mabasa was suspended but never dismissed, O'Sullivan said.
He said the general was later allowed special arrangements that pushed up his pension by R3.5m.
The statement, dated June 17, runs to 29 pages.
The Krejcir matter is only part of it.
O'Sullivan also took aim at KZN top cop Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi directly over a set of Louis Vuitton bags.
He said a SAPS supplier, Inbanathan Kistiah, allegedly gave expensive Louis Vuitton bags to Mkhwanazi and national commissioner Fannie Masemola.
“O’Sullivan alleges the gifts were a reward for a contract to supply bulletproof vests to the police at about five times their real price.
Kistiah is on trial on fraud and corruption charges over a police contract.
O'Sullivan said he served a subpoena on the anti-corruption unit IDAC and that its reply confirmed the matter was still being investigated.
"These are criminal matters that remain active, and IDAC cannot share any of the information and/or documentation requested," he quoted the reply as saying.
He said Mkhwanazi raised the bags himself while giving evidence, before denying he received one.
"At least my wife now knows what a Louis Vuitton bag is valued at," O'Sullivan quoted him as saying.
The investigator went further on the July 6 briefing that started the commission. He called it a smokescreen.
O'Sullivan said the briefing was staged to draw attention away from a group of crime intelligence officers he had been trying to get suspended, whom he called the "Crime Intelligence Seven".
He said Mkhwanazi and Masemola held a secret two-day meeting at a Pretoria police training centre that ended early on July 4, two days before the briefing.
He said the slush fund at crime intelligence was the real problem.
He said its budget grew from R98 million a year in 2012 to R600 million by 2024, an increase he said was five times the rate of inflation.
O'Sullivan said he also examined the PowerPoint presentation Mkhwanazi used at the briefing.
He said its hidden data showed it was made on a police computer, not Mkhwanazi's own, and he wanted the commission to find out who typed it.
The statement raised other names, too.
O'Sullivan said he complained in 2021 about Major General Feroz Khan, the suspended deputy head of crime intelligence, whom he linked to the illegal tobacco trade, and that nothing was done.
Khan was arrested in May this year and faces charges of corruption, unlawful possession and dealing of gold, and defeating the ends of justice.
He said Khan was moonlighting as a director of several companies, including motor spares businesses, while serving in crime intelligence.
He also returned to former acting commissioner Khomotso Phahlane.
O'Sullivan said his complaints against Phahlane led corrupt officers to target him with arrests, raids, kidnapping, torture, and attempts on his life.
He said a DPCI Judge's report found police had repeatedly violated his constitutional rights over four years.
Phahlane is facing trial on corruption charges linked to more than R500m in police forensic contracts.
The statement reached back through Jackie Selebi, the national police commissioner O'Sullivan helped put behind bars in 2010, and forward to General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, whose July 2025 briefing led to the commission being set up.
Monday will not be O'Sullivan's first turn in the witness chair this year.
He gave evidence twice before parliament's separate ad hoc committee, which is probing the same allegations.
On February 26, he walked out of those hearings while still being questioned, saying he had to catch a flight to Johannesburg.
The walkout angered MPs, who threatened him with a summons and a possible criminal charge.
He returned in early March to finish his evidence.
His relationship with Mkhwanazi has since broken down into open conflict.
Mkhwanazi named O'Sullivan during his own testimony at the commission, telling it that it was an open secret that O'Sullivan had links to suspended deputy national police commissioner Shadrack Sibiya.
O'Sullivan rejected that and accused Mkhwanazi of knowing about police links to organised crime for years before he blew the whistle in July last year.
The two men are now suing each other. Mkhwanazi lodged a R5m defamation claim against O'Sullivan in September, accusing him of making damaging public statements.
O'Sullivan answered with a R10m counterclaim in October, accusing Mkhwanazi of defaming him in his evidence to the commission and to the National Assembly.
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