The assassinated top detective, Lt-Col Charl Kinnear, was on the brink of cracking a massive "guns-to-gangs" syndicate at the police Central Firearms Registry (CFR).
Experts monitoring firearms flooding into the hands of criminal networks countrywide told the Sunday Times this week that Kinnear, shot in Cape Town nine days ago, had persisted with a case that had defeated many other detectives.
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime director Mark Shaw, who has researched illicit firearm markets for a forthcoming book, said the investigation by Kinnear and anti-gang unit colleagues was an existential threat to the criminal underworld and a corrupt police network.
"It's literally life-threatening for them. This would put leading criminal figures and police officers in jail if the case went ahead," said Shaw.
Jenni Irish-Qhobosheane, a Global Initiative expert who has been examining the CFR with Shaw, said Kinnear was determined to investigate the case.
"What's absolutely clear was that he wasn't backing off," she said.
A possible link with the CFR investigation quickly developed into the main line of inquiry for detectives investigating Kinnear's murder, on Friday last week outside his home in Bishop Lavis, Cape Town.
Three days after Kinnear was shot by a lone gunman who is still at large, former Griquas and Valke rugby forward Zane Kilian, 39, was arrested. Police sources told the Sunday Times Kilian had tracked Kinnear's movements 2,000 times over several months - including on the day of his murder - by "pinging" his cellphone.
Kilian, from Springs, Gauteng, was charged with murder, conspiracy to murder and illegal interception of communication when he appeared in Bishop Lavis magistrate's court on Friday. He is expected to apply for bail on October 5.
It emerged this week that Kilian is a debt collector in Gauteng for suspected Cape Town underworld figure Nafiz Modack, who was suing Kinnear as investigating officer and in the detective's personal capacity for the return of nine confiscated firearms.
An affidavit Kinnear deposed in response to Modack's high court application, obtained this week by the Sunday Times, paints a dire picture of a CFR in disarray, with descriptions of numerous ways in which Firearms Control Act requirements were allegedly ignored in Modack's licence applications.
Shaw and Irish-Qhobosheane said problems at the CFR include:
- Its gun-licensing system is partly on paper and partly on an electronic system "that runs very badly";
- Its management is "dysfunctional"; and
- There is corruption at the registry and among designated firearms officers at police stations.
"The overall result is a growing number of legitimate firearms ending up in the hands of criminals. We have drug dealers, gangsters on the Cape Flats, people with criminal records - all with licensed firearms and they've obtained them through corruption," said Shaw.
"The bottom line is that high-level corruption over a number of years and several attempts to clean it have not borne any fruit. Kinnear stumbled onto this and began the process of investigation and now he is dead."
Kinnear signed his 49-page affidavit on February 8 2019, after confiscating nine firearms from Modack. In June this year, 10 police officers with ranks ranging from sergeant to brigadier were arrested with Modack and his brother, Yaseen.
"At least five other suspects, including a senior officer of the South African Police Service, are yet to be arrested," said national police commissioner Gen Khehla Sitole.
Kinnear's affidavit says that in applying for licences for the confiscated weapons, which included an assault rifle and shotguns, Modack failed to meet the requirements of the Firearms Control Act by:
- Failing to divulge convictions for illegal possession of a firearm and dealing in second-hand goods;
- Giving different addresses outside the jurisdictions of the police stations where he made his applications;
- Failing to indicate that he had a safe suitable for a shotgun; and
- Paying for his licence applications at police stations other than the ones where the applications were made, and using different names for payments.
A licence application that had been refused at the Norwood police station in Johannesburg in December 2011 was approved within six days at Edenvale police station, east of the city. "That is unheard of as it takes at least months to complete the whole process," Kinnear writes.
"Licences were obtained unlawfully for [Modack's] firearms. Consequently, possession of those firearms by [Modack] will be unlawful."
In Modack's responding affidavit he denies Kinnear's allegations, and he told the Sunday Times that although Kilian collected debts on his behalf, "there's no relationship with him. I wouldn't say we had a business relationship, we made two or three deals only."
The high court case in which Kinnear deposed his affidavit was still under way, Modack said, "but even in that case I had nothing to gain from Kinnear's murder".
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"It's not in my routine to harm any cop. If they come for me, I f*** them up in the [witness] box, and I won my cases. Every single case Kinnear threw at me I won them already, so there's no reason to get rid of Kinnear or to harm Kinnear," he said.
But Shaw said the CFR investigation represents the biggest threat to underworld figures and police involved in corruption at the CFR.
"I assume they were getting close and people don't want to get arrested, and Kinnear was the guy who they knew was seeing the process through," he said.
"My general sense of speaking to people is that it was an accumulation of things and that he was becoming very disruptive."
Irish-Qhobosheane said she understood that Kinnear's investigation had uncovered a corrupt network that made the 2019 arrests "the tip of the iceberg".
The anti-gang unit's investigation had also resulted in the reinstatement of firearms charges against alleged 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield, who is due to be tried in Khayelitsha regional court.
Shaw said the "key issue" at the CFR is that the process of applying for a gun licence is so inefficient "that it almost invites corruption". Irish-Qhobosheane said the consequence of the corruption is "a nonstop deluge of guns, and not only in the Western Cape. It's also in Eldorado Park and Westbury here in Gauteng.
"The CFR has been the most bizarre thing because everyone knows what a mess it is. You can speak to everyone in the firearm industry, they'll tell you how easy it is to just buy a firearm licence from the CFR. What has always amazed me was the police's unwillingness to take this seriously."
After visiting Kinnear's widow and two sons last Saturday, police minister Bheki Cele said the government is trying to resolve the problem of firearms circulating freely in the underworld.
"For instance, we know that there is an amendment of the firearms bill that is there. There is an amnesty through which we are trying to get these guns back, and there are operations where we try to raid and find these illegal firearms," he said.
Cele also promised an investigation of police measures to protect Kinnear after threats to his life and the arrest outside his home of two people carrying a hand grenade.
Several Sunday Times sources said members of Kinnear's anti-gang unit team had stayed at his house to protect him. He was allegedly never provided with official protection.
A lieutenant-general is leading the inquiry, said Cele's spokesperson, Lirandzu Themba. She referred other questions about the investigation of Kinnear's murder to the police.
National police spokesperson Brig Vishnu Naidoo said: "We do not discuss matters pertaining to criminal investigations, especially if they are as serious as murder investigations, in the public domain."
Cele said the safety of detectives handling sensitive cases would be urgently looked into. "There are areas where the senior investigators have been protected," he said.
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