When police special forces teams, backed by Interpol agents, smashed into a luxury house in the affluent Johannesburg suburb of Bryanston at 4 a.m. on Nov. 17, 2022, they soon realized their intelligence was wrong.
The intel had understated what they would find behind the mansion’s façade, framed by manicured lawns, rosebushes, and fountains—all perfect for creating a front of suburban respectability and tranquility in an area that’s home to captains of industry and CEOs of some of South Africa’s top companies.
Unbeknownst to the wealthy neighbors and their phalanxes of servants, the man living next door for the past seven years had been one of Israel’s and Interpol’s “most wanted.” He allegedly used Africa’s most developed economy to continue his nefarious operations.
Yaniv Yossi Ben Simon, 46, who’s currently fighting extradition to his homeland, is an alleged hitman and “all-around enforcer” for the Abergil organization, a Tel Aviv-based crime group with tentacles stretching across the Middle East and internationally, according to Interpol.
The leader of the syndicate, Yitzhak Abergil, is serving three life sentences plus an additional 30 years in an Israeli prison for the murder of three bystanders in a 2003 bombing that was an attempted hit on rival drug traffickers.
Inside Simon’s house, investigators found an “arsenal” of weapons that included illegal AK-47 assault rifles and an assortment of handguns, drones equipped with “high-resolution” cameras, stolen motorcycles and “high-speed” vehicles, bulletproof vests, six pounds of cocaine, money counting machines, and scales used to weigh narcotics.
“This latest saga apparently showing the Abergil organization has a strong presence in South Africa is yet more evidence that the country is being used as a haven for transnational organized crime groups, from the Italian, Russian, and Chinese mafia to the Nigerian cybercrime and human trafficking rings, and many more," Chad Thomas, a private detective with insight into the operation that targeted Simon, told The Epoch Times.
“It’s actually been like this for decades, but it’s getting worse.”
He said that while the apartheid government had committed gross human rights violations against citizens, its police had been very effective in preventing organized crime from gaining a foothold in South Africa.
“What’s concerning is that these global fugitives aren’t simply hiding here; they’re using South Africa to carry on with their crimes,” Thomas said. “My police sources tell me that some of the rifles found in Ben Simon’s pad were converted into sniper rifles.”
He noted that a light delivery van found on the property was converted into a “soundproof sniper’s nest” while another “had been made into a torture chamber.”
“Assassins around the world use motorbikes; they’re the best getaway vehicles because they’re so fast,“ Thomas said. ”The obvious conclusion to draw from the motorbikes, silenced firearms, and the converted LDV is that this group was carrying out hits on South African soil.”
There have been a number of unsolved assassinations in the country in recent years.
One of the more prominent cases is the killing of former South African soccer star Marc Batchelor in July 2019.
After “falling in with the wrong crowd,” according to his family, Batchelor was killed when two men on motorcycles sprayed his BMW with bullets as he pulled up to his home in the Johannesburg suburb of Olivedale—four miles from Bryanston.
The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) has described the presence of local and international criminal syndicates in South Africa as an “existential threat” to the country’s democratic institutions, economy, and people.
Since 2010, the murder rate had risen by 38 percent, according to the report.
According to GI-TOC, the murder rate is currently more than 40 per 100,000 citizens per year, enough to put South Africa in the top five countries with the highest numbers of extrajudicial killings.
The report said more than 10,000 people were kidnapped for ransom in 2021, with figures for 2022 almost certainly significantly higher.
“Bear in mind that this type of crime is vastly underreported because often the victims’ families don’t involve the police; they simply pay the ransom,” Interpol’s South Africa representative, Andy Mashaile, told The Epoch Times.
Police statistics from 2019 indicate that there were only 77 “kidnappings for ransom” that year.
Professor Elrena van der Spuy, a senior criminologist at the University of Cape Town, told The Epoch Times that over the past two decades, crime syndicates had “stuck fingers in many pies” in South Africa.
“Aside from your petty, opportunistic crimes such as housebreaking and violent crimes such as rape, I don’t think there’s a crime that happens these days that isn’t connected in some way to an organized crime group,” she said.
The GI-TOC report supports this view, detailing these groups’ involvement in carjacking, vehicle theft, extortion rackets, human trafficking, narcotics smuggling, cash-in-transit robberies, rhino and elephant poaching, and the theft of metal and equipment from state power, water, and transport companies.
“Criminal groups have penetrated to the very heart of the South African economy,“ GI-TOC Director Mark Shaw told The Epoch Times. ”They have infiltrated gold, platinum, and coal mines. All of these minerals are stolen and sold illicitly.”
Mashaile said gangs specializing in cybercrime, especially from Nigeria, were now “firmly ensconced” in South Africa, taking advantage of its excellent information technology systems.
“Our research shows South Africa is the biggest center of internet-protocol addresses used for digital extortion in Africa, and one of the biggest in the world,” he said
According to the GI-TOC report: “South Africa faces a complex, hybrid criminal threat.
Money Laundering
Criminal law expert Ian Allis of Allis Attorneys said the country’s “poorly controlled” financial systems make it “relatively easy” for syndicates to launder money.“Our economy is melting down, but there’s still enough money for them to make, and South Africa is still the main continental conduit through which billions of dollars flow every day. Money laundering is easy here; even the government does it,” Allis said.
Shaw said the weakening of state institutions, such as the police and prosecutions authority, that had happened under former President Jacob Zuma had provided, and is still providing, a “strong platform” for organized crime to flourish.
Zuma governed for nine years until the African National Congress (ANC) ousted him in 2018.
A judicial commission of inquiry has found that at least $34 billion was stolen from public corporations during the Zuma administration. Much of the plundered money, according to commission head Judge Raymond Zondo, ended up in the pockets of alleged organized crime figures connected to Zuma and the ANC.
Both the former president and his party deny the allegations, although Zuma’s successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, has acknowledged the presence of “criminals” inside the ANC and pledged to “get rid of them.”
Zondo said Zuma had appointed “cronies and buddies” to manage state companies.
This, said Shaw, had resulted in “patronage networks, which in turn helped facilitate grand-scale corruption and enabled business and organized crime to secure an unprecedented foothold in the state apparatus.”
Allis is convinced that the roots of the country’s expanding organized crime crisis lie in the ANC’s “post-apartheid, open-door policies.”
“Cast your mind back to the 1990s. It was a free-for-all. Millions of illegal immigrants from all over Africa poured into this country. The ANC government showed little inclination to enforce its own immigration laws," Allis said.
“It didn’t take long for the mafia types to cotton on to what was happening. You can imagine, they must have rubbed their hands in glee: ‘Wow, here’s this beautiful country on the southern tip of Africa with lots of money, big industry, a corrupt government, pathetic law enforcement, plus top-class hotels and beaches, and restaurants. What are we waiting for, boys? Pack your bags!’”
In 1995, following intervention from the Italian government, alleged Sicilian mafia boss Vito Palazzolo, who’d established several companies in South Africa, was extradited to his homeland and later sentenced to nine years in prison for “activities and associations with the mafia.”
Underworld Killings
Local investigations have implicated Krejcir in a string of underworld killings, including of a rival gang boss, but he hasn’t been charged in any of these cases.Before his incarceration, he had publicly boasted of his friendships and “business alliances” with leading ANC members. They denied ever meeting him.
Thomas said it was an “open secret” in the South African intelligence community that other fugitives from international justice are operating in the country.
“Believe me, the arrest of Ben Simon is just the tip of the iceberg. I commend the South African units involved in his takedown, but we should remember, it only happened because of pressure from Interpol,” Thomas said.
According to Thomas, South Africa has “incredible” legislation to combat organized crime.
“We have members within law enforcement and prosecutorial structures that want to make a difference. But they don’t get the political backing required,“ he said. ”They lack resources and capacity and infrastructure to fight what is fast becoming a very embarrassing problem on the global stage. At the moment, they’re carrying a knife into a gunfight.”
Ramaphosa recently bolstered his prosecuting authority and specialized investigative units. But he’s increasingly hamstrung by allegations that he, too, is involved in organized crime.
An independent legal panel established late last year found the president could have committed crimes, including money laundering, tax evasion, and kidnapping, related to the theft of at least $580,000 from his luxury game ranch in early 2020.
Ramaphosa has acknowledged the money was stolen from his farm, but said it was “legitimate proceeds” from the sale of animals to a Sudanese businessman linked to ousted President Omar al-Bashir.
According to Zuma’s former police intelligence chief, Arthur Fraser, the president used his bodyguards to track the suspected robbers to neighboring Namibia. Fraser’s affidavit described how some of the suspects were extradited illegally, tortured, and subsequently paid to keep silent about the entire affair.
“With this kind of stuff happening in South Africa, obviously international criminals will find the country super-attractive,“ Allis said. ”I mean, what better place to be than a place where the fish appears to have rotted from the head down.”
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