More Zille’s spook stories
COMPANY CONFIRMS SCHEEPERS SOLD THE POWERFUL IMSI GRABBER
SBV Services have confirmed it had bought the powerful IMSI Grabber surveillance device from suspended police crime intelligence cop Paul Scheepers - but the company’s spokesperson said it was unaware that importing it into South Africa was illegal.
The company paid Scheepers’s company, Eagle Eye Solution Technologies, R538 844, R164 470 and an additional R50 000 for the device.
Regulation of Interception of Communications and Communication-Related Information Act (RICA) makes it illegal to privately import equipment like the IMSI Grabber into South Africa.
SBV Services spokesperson Flavia de Cillia said: “Furthermore the device was reported and handed over to the SAPS as soon as our Risk & Compliance team acquired knowledge that it was illegal. SBV Services is a responsible corporate citizen and is committed to ethical governance and to upholding high ethical standards in its business practices. We are working with the SAPS to assist with the investigation.”
Police allege Scheepers spied on several people by abusing Section 205 subpoenas. Yesterday its top brass would not say how extensively police have used the legal instrument. Asked about the number of section 205 subpoenas issued last year national police spokesman Hangwani Muluadzi said it was an “operational issue” and akin to asking police “how many windows were at a police station?”.
Scheepers who until his arrest on May 8 last year was been based at the provincial office of the police, had since 2003 owned a private company which offered cellphone tracking and “debugging” against eavesdropping amongst some of its services. He will be back in the Belville Commercial Crimes Court on June 29, facing 26 charges of fraud, defeating the ends of justice and contravening the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Communication-Related Information Act (RICA).
National intelligence agencies and the police's crime intelligence routinely use section 205 of the Criminal Procedures Act 51 of 1977, which allows them to apply to a high court judge, regional court magistrate or a magistrate to grant access to cellphone records, telephone records or information about billing and the ownership of cellphones.
A section 205 subpoena also obliges cellphone companies to hand over this information to law enforcement officials, when ordered by a judge or magistrate.
According to the police's charge sheet, Scheepers had bid for and won a tender with the Western Cape government for R115 800 in May 2010 to “debug cellphones and conduct encryption and sim card encryption” for Premier Helen Zille and her cabinet colleagues. He was ultimately paid R125 450 for his services two months later.
The police charge sheet against Scheepers comes as NGO Right2Know protested against the police's abuse of section 205 subpoenas. The NGO has called for a reform of RICA, saying it lacked transparency and was open to abuse.
In their charge sheet, police investigators accuse Scheepers of conducting illegal surveillance on a Financial Services Board legal advisor who had conducted inspections into various financial institutions between January and April 2012. Police charge that Scheepers went to Bellville Magistrate Court, asking for a 205 subpoena and claiming the legal advisor's cellphone had been used in an armed robbery/ATM bombing.
When former Western Province cricketer John Commins was murdered at his home in early January 2013 suspicions fell on several people around him, and unhappy with the police investigation, his daughter Donne Commins, who is a sports agent to several South African cricketers, hired a private detective, who in turn used Scheepers to conduct cellphone triangulation.
Instead Scheepers applied for a section 205 subpoena for several cellphone numbers, one of those was of Commins' handyman Winrod Longwe who, contacted yesterday said he was unaware that his call records had been scrutinised by Scheepers.
The DA's spokesman on policing Zakhele Mbele said the issue of abuses by the police's crime intelligence had not come up in Parliament. Chairman of the Parliament's portfolio committee on policing Francois Beukman (ANC) could not be reached for comment.