Agrizzi’s Damascus moment questioned

The Citizen first reported in January how the Watson family have accused former Bosasa chief operating officer Angelo Agrizzi of trying to extort millions out of Gavin Watson and Bosasa, in return for him not making damaging statements about the company, or otherwise harming the firm.

The Watsons maintain Agrizzi first began to threaten the livelihood of Bosasa in about 2016 when he started his own companies, including one called Crearis, as a rival to Bosasa. He allegedly also threatened to join a competitor catering firm, the Compass Group, and take a major prison catering contract with him.

Agrizzi has denied this. “That contract represented 60% of Bosasa’s revenue at the time,” said Jared Watson, adding that his uncle, Gavin, initially acceded to Agrizzi’s demands.

The Watson evidence points to Agrizzi and former Bosasa chief financial officer Andries van Tonder being allowed to sign off on almost all financial transactions in the company from 2006 onwards, which the board rectified, according to Watson, by a resolution that Gavin would have to countersign every transaction from 2017.

According to the new evidence, Agrizzi even pretended to be Watson at times by running an e-mail account in his name.

The Watsons further claim it was only in about 2017 that they realised the extent of the wealth Agrizzi had amassed during his nearly 20 years at Bosasa. They had apparently not known about the man’s Fourways mansion and other homes in SA, his “fleet of supercars, including five Ferraris”, his art collection and his properties in Italy. Agrizzi, however, has told The

Citizen he “only” has one Ferrari, a 2000 model 360 Modena, has no properties in Italy and that he’s not a fine art collector. In the Watson file, however, an e-mail allegedly from him does reference four Ferraris, with another one, an “812 Superfast” supposedly on order.

Agrizzi told the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture he was earning R10 million a year at Bosasa, with annual bonuses of R5 million. According to the Watsons, this lucrative contract was only grudgingly signed off by Gavin Watson to stop Agrizzi from taking the prisons catering tender to the Compass Group in 2016.

A later “exit agreement” between Bosasa and Agrizzi, in March 2017, was set to see him get a severance loan of R26 million, a R150 000 monthly retainer to “consult Gavin Watson personally on business issues” and other benefits in what can be likened to what became a messy divorce settlement agreement between Agrizzi and the company – an agreement that appears to have later fallen apart.

R10m is what Agrizzi told Zondo he earned at Bosasa.