Mikey Schultz? Never heard of him, says top gang-buster

One of the commanders of the Western Cape anti-gang unit says he has never heard of Brett Kebble’s killer, Mikey Schultz.

Lieutenant-Colonel Charl Kinnear makes the admission in a 59-page complaint about six crime intelligence officers that paints a picture of a police service at war with itself.

Kinnear sent the report on December 29 2018 to eight senior provincial and national police commanders and Robert McBride, head of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid).

He also submitted it at Mfuleni police station in Cape Town eight days ago, when he laid a complaint against the crime intelligence officers.

In the report, Kinnear said he received information in 2018 “that there was a planned assassination attempt on the life of a person by the name of Micky Schultz in Johannesburg”. 

He added: “I had no idea who Micky Schultz was but had heard that he was somehow involved in a company called Carnilinx in Johannesburg and also a high-flier in the ‘underworld’ of Johannesburg.”

Kinnear said he “telephonically contacted someone who I knew at Carnilinx and requested that he somehow inform Micky Schultz that there was going to be an assassination attempt on his life”.

Kinnear said the fact that alleged nightclub extortionist Nafiz Modack knew a week later about his call to the tobacco manufacturer was proof that crime intelligence was illegally tapping his phone.  

Schultz is the hitman who killed businessman Kebble in 2005. He was later granted immunity from prosecution.

Eyewitness News reported in December that the SA Revenue Service may investigate an allegedly unlawful deal involving former Sars commissioner Tom Moyane, which allegedly deleted Carnilinx’s R600m tax debt.

Western Cape community safety MEC Alan Winde has called for an urgent investigation into a string of allegations in Kinnear’s report. They include claims that crime intelligence officers:

• Visited Modack in Pollsmoor prison in January 2018, in violation of an order that no police officers were to see him;
• Told an informant at Goodwood prison not to co-operate with Kinnear in his investigation of Modack;
• Threatened another policeman with arrest unless he gave a false statement that Kinnear had stolen money confiscated from a drug dealer;
• Illegally tapped his cellphones and those of his family and friends;
• Asked drug dealers and gangsters in Mitchells Plain to “make statements and lay charges against us for any type of wrongdoing” in attempts to have Kinnear, deputy provincial commissioner Major-General Jeremy Vearey and others arrested and fired; and
• Tortured a man they arrested on Christmas Eve last year by burning him with cigarettes and matches, saying he would be released only if he made a statement that he was supplying money to Kinnear and Vearey. Kinnear’s report contains photographs of the man displaying burns and bruises on his arms and legs.

Kinnear said the crime intelligence officers “are making an absolute mockery of the criminal justice system and even more so of the South African Police Service”.

They were doing so, he said, in a personal vendetta against him, Vearey, national crime intelligence head Lieutenant-General Peter Jacobs, a captain and a constable.

Kinnear’s report was the document cited in a complaint to the press ombudsman’s office last Wednesday about TimesLIVE reporter Aron Hyman. In their complaint, Kinnear and Vearey said the reporter was guilty of entrapment in his attempts to obtain a copy of the report.

The complaint was withdrawn two hours after TimesLIVE posted a recording of a telephone conversation between Hyman and Vearey in which the police chief told the reporter to ask Kinnear for the report.

This sparked a demand from Winde for the suspension of Vearey and Kinnear pending an investigation into what he called “a clear attempt to intimidate the media”.

In a letter to McBride and police minister Bheki Cele, Winde said: “Vearey appears to have been caught in a blatant lie, bringing his own integrity and the integrity of the police service into question.”