GOODFELLA?
Monster Glenn Agiotti on giving it all away
GLENN Agliotti is a material man and he’s unapologetic about his love of money. “Of course it makes you happy. Tell me you want to fly economy class for 18 hours to New York,” he says.
The self-confessed drug trafficker, murder accused and super-snitch was sequestrated last year. It’s useless even trying to believe it, though.
Eating poached eggs on toast at JB’s Corner in Sandton City this week, Agliotti looks relaxed, well fed and positively prosperous.
Agliotti was arrested and acquitted for his connection to the 2005 killing of JCI boss Brett Kebble.
He paid then-police chief Jackie Selebi to let him facilitate illegal scams and then turned him in when it looked like he might get into trouble. In 2011, he snitched on a drug-trafficking syndicate he had been involved with.
The South African Revenue Service laid criminal charges against him for tax evasion and fraud in 2010. It said he owed about R77-million and when he didn’t stump up the cash, it auctioned off all his possessions. Five years of intensive litigation left him with not much to sell, so when the sequestration order came in, Agliotti didn’t bother fighting it.
He owns no property, has no shares and says he has nothing stashed under his mattress.
So does he prefer to pay cash or use a card? There’s no contest — credit cards aren’t an option for insolvents.
But then some things — and people — are always paid for in cash. Selebi, for example, was given bags full of it.
Agliotti still doesn’t believe it was even a little irregular. “[Selebi] was a friend. I give all my friends money,” he says. And later: “No one makes big money [if they are] perfectly legit; nowhere are things perfectly straight — not in any company or country.”
His biography, Glenn Agliotti, has been on sale since June. People who have read it come up to him and say they “cannot believe what I went through. They can’t believe I’m still smiling.”
But he is still smiling — being genial and unflappable is what he does best. “You attract more bees with a bucket of honey than a bucket of sh**,” he says.
What does he spend his money on, ill-gotten or not? Agliotti says he loves to shop, loves to spoil people and loves the good things in life. The best thing he ever spent money on was “a shopping trip for my daughter [Chiara] in London”.
His worst purchase? A Hugh Hefner-style dressing gown for R14 000: “I never look at prices.” When he got to the till and realised what the gown cost, he was “too embarrassed to cancel the sale”. He has never worn it.
Agliotti has been quick to cash in his friends to get himself off the legal hook. He has been called a liar and a thief many times on the stand, and his reputation is shot among most of the people who know his name. But there are plenty who don’t know his name, or who don’t care about what he did.
He also has a lot of friends who have stuck by him. “I’ve lost everything. But I’m a survivor; I’ll make it back.”
He’s still a “facilitator”, a person who makes introductions, gets deals sealed and takes a commission for it. He’s planning to make his fortune in minerals and resources in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, the DRC and Kenya.
It’s a natural fit — many transactions are done in cash and he knows the business backwards. “Selling car tyres or coal mines, it’s all the same. You find a buyer and a seller and you get the two together.”
Agliotti was paid millions for his skill before things went wrong, but his first pay cheque was R20. He was in the army and
Very poor people make me sad. If I can change one person’s life, I’ll do it
he spent it on cold drinks. The first “real” money he made was R550 as a rep at Greenfield Manufacturing, a company that made products out of sheet metal and wire. He also had a company car.
Agliotti sells himself as a magnanimous and sensitive soul, a “romantic fool” who loves to help people. He has bought strangers groceries and put their children through school — some didn’t even know he was their benefactor. “Very poor people make me sad,” he says. “I can’t change the world, but if I can change one person’s life, I’ll do it.”
He has changed a lot of people’s lives for the worse, but he’s rehabilitated now, he says. He wanted to write his biography so people would know they could turn their lives around. He wants people to know that it’s “not good to be a gangster”. He says children think the power is cool and he plans to talk at schools to tell them it is not.
Agliotti might be living a more frugal life now, but it won’t be for long. He says he’ll make his money back and he probably will. By hook or by crook.