The stuff movies are made of
Radovan Krejcir arrived in South Africa in 2007. Arrested at OR Tambo International Airport, he bribed his way out of deportation, bought a Bedfordview mansion and openly consorted with known criminals and senior police officers, making bloody deals and s
ADOZEN remote-controlled gun barrels emerged from behind the number plate of a car. Bullets flew towards where Radovan Krejcir stood. Then the car exploded into flames.
At first, Krejcir thought that someone had let off some fireworks, before realising that he was in fact the target of an attack. A movie screenwriter couldn’t have produced a better scripted action scene. It was too fantastic to be true.
And yet, when police, emergency services and journalists arrived at the scene, the fantasy was reality: there, for everyone to see, stood the burnt-out car, the gun barrels, which had been hidden behind a number plate, still smoking hot, and the bullet holes in the wall and in Krejcir’s car.
It was a clear winter’s day in Johannesburg, July 25, 2013, when Krejcir became the target of an assassination attempt. It was around 11am, and he had just driven his R1.7 million bullet-proof, matte-black Mercedes-Benz AMG into the parking lot of Moneypoint, his gold and diamond pawnshop. He had a parking bay in front of the business.
Krejcir hadn’t noticed the red VW Polo Cross parked behind him, assuming it was a customer either visiting his shop or the estate agency next door, Remax One. The boot of the Polo was positioned opposite the space where Krejcir always parked. He got out of his car, on a phone call. He was distracted.
According to his version, bullets flew towards him, fired out of several gun barrels. He had taken three steps towards the entrance of his shop when he heard a loud popping noise, he told The Star.
At first, he thought it was fireworks, and he carried on with his call, but then he saw the bullet dents in his car and realised he was under attack. His colleague ran out to help get him inside the building as the car in the parking lot exploded into flames.
Later, police were able to piece together that, as Krejcir got out of his car, somebody, who was nearby, set off the secret weapon attached behind the number plate of the Polo by means of a remote control. The back number plate blew off, revealing a dozen homemade gun barrels. At least 24 holes were found in windows and walls near the parking spot, but the projectiles were unable to pierce Krejcir’s modified car, which merely had dents on the driver and passenger windows. Flames had melted the back of the Polo, probably from the intense heat generated by the firearms.
Krejcir not only managed to survive the assassination attempt, but he did so without even sustaining a scratch. “It was like something from a movie,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s definitely a professional job.” He described the attack to Graeme Hosken from The Times: “It was bang. Bang, bang, bang. Over and over again very quickly. There was no time to think. It was incredibly scary.”
The police said the weapon was a bat- tery-operated, remote-controlled device. They believed that once the assassin realised the job had been bungled, he probably fled the scene. Real-estate agents at Remax One said they had noticed the vehicle over the past three to four days. Both adjacent businesses assumed the car was visiting the other. However, the car had not been there earlier that morning, and must have re-entered the premises between 9am and 10.30. “We ran out when we heard a bang and more popping sounds and saw the car on fire,” said estate agent Jarrid Rahme.
Flanked by two associates, Krejcir told Lerato Mbangeni, a journalist from The Star: “I don’t know who did it, but if I did I wouldn’t tell you.” Mbangeni said Krejcir looked nonchalant and described him as cheerful, puffing on a cigarette, as he joked that he would have to start going to church. “It was a surprise for me, but I am not gonna get some bodyguards or anything like that,” he told her.
Krejcir told Alex Eliseev, writing in the Daily Maverick, that he believed he was a lucky man. Eliseev said the swarm of detectives who were all over the scene were, for once, not there to raid Krejcir’s house or take him for a ride downtown. “All my life is like James Bond stuff,” he told Eliseev. “So it’s usual stuff for me… It’s how I live my life.”
Police confirmed the Polo had been stolen in Brixton in April and the number plates were cloned. The woman identified as owning the vehicle registered to the licence plates still had her vehicle. Those responsible had attached the cloned plates to a car that was the same make, model and colour. The police opened a case of attempted murder. Underworld sources told The Star it was believed the weapon was linked to the Cape Town movie industry and the hit may have had something to do with Krejcir’s dealings with Cape Town gangsters over territory.
Krejcir denied claims that before the attempted hit he had met alleged underworld figures from Cape Town, and that this was somehow linked to the incident. “No, no. I believe that’s bulls***. People are talking a lot of nonsense,” he said. It emerged that three weeks before the bizarre attempt on his life, Moneypoint had been broken into and R3 million worth of jewellery stolen. “The suspects gained entrance through the roof. Once inside the premises, the safe was cut open,” police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Lungelo Dlamini told The Star.
The robbery had taken place at night, and it was discovered only the following morning. Police believed the two incidents may have been connected. Besides the gold and diamond exchange, the business also gave instant cash loans without any credit checks. A source said Krejcir knew who was behind the break-in. A source told the Saturday Star that the attempted hit must have been done by a top gangster, and by someone, or persons, with a number of skills – from explosives handling to panelbeating. “There are only two or three (such gangsters) in this country,” the source said.
A police source with knowledge of investigations into Krejcir said the attempted hit was designed to be a clear warning to the Czech national: “This was a message. Steps will be taken to silence people. Especially those who are about to talk.” A team of detectives, including members of the police counter-terrorism unit, were involved in the case, he said. A military-arms expert said the weapon system used was intriguing:
The way it was fired, the way ammunition was fed into the barrels and the fire afterwards indicate the designer knew exactly what he was doing. This device was built with a knowledge not everyone has. It takes years of design and practice. It was fired using a specialised electronic system possibly run through a radio frequency. It will keep our forensics teams busy, especially as the fire is likely to have destroyed whatever evidence was left behind, according to the expert.
But, while police were kept busy trying to figure out who was behind the attempted hit, those close to Krejcir started to get suspicious. A Czech employee of Krejcir’s, Miloslav Potiska, who lived in a room on the second floor of Krejcir’s mansion, later revealed in a tell-all book that Krejcir acted afterwards like nothing had happened.
He showed no signs of being worried and did not increase his personal security in any way. Potiska said that behind the scenes, Krejcir was broke and was coming up with all sorts of ideas to make some money. One of these was to cook high-quality crystal meth (also known in South Africa as tik), which was unavailable in the country, using European “cooks”, who he brought into South Africa.
According to Potiska, Krejcir and an underworld character, Lebanese drug dealer Sam Issa, were working on exporting a big batch of meth to Australia. Those close to Krejcir believed that while this deal was going down, he wanted to distract the police. Potiska said he thought Krejcir was behind his own assassination attempt: there was no better way to create a diversion than by becoming the target of an assassination attempt.
The police had a different theory about what had happened – a theory that confirmed Krejcir had been the target. They believed somebody desperately wanted him dead. He had stepped on too many toes to get to the top of the underworld. But who it was, and why they wanted Krejcir six feet under, would emerge only a few murders and one bomb blast later. This is an extract from Krejcir: Business As Usual by Angelique Serrao, published by Jonathan Ball Publishers at a recommended retail price of R250.
‘All my life is like James Bond. It’s how I live my life’
ANGELIQUE SERRAO is the former investigations editor at The Star. A multi-award winning journalist some of her high-profile stories include the e-toll investigation, the Wendy Machanik estate agency fraud and the Dave Sheer Guns scandal. In 2014, she co-wrote The E-toll Saga: A Journey from CEO to Civil Activist with Wayne Duvenage (2014). Today, she works as an investigative journalist at Media24.