The Zondo commission ventured into the belly of the beast of illicit operations at the controversial Bosasa empire, with video evidence showing wads of cash totalling R1m being counted for the payment of bribes.
The second day of explosive testimony by former Bosasa chief operating officer Angelo Agrizzi focused on a six-minute video secretly recorded inside a vault of the company’s chief executive, Gavin Watson.
The video, recorded in 2017 on a cellphone by Bosasa’s chief financial officer, Andries van Tonder, shows piles of R100 notes stacked on Watson’s desk. Watson is then heard counting the money in bundles of R100,000 totalling R1m.
Agrizzi, an employee at the company from 1999 to 2016, told Judge Raymond Zondo that the discussion between Watson and Van Tonder in the video related to the payment of a bribe to former correctional services CFO Patrick Gillingham.
He said the payment of bribes to those who secured contracts for Bosasa, which has been rebranded African Global Operations, and hush money to staff were made on a monthly basis.
On Wednesday, Agrizzi testified that Bosasa paid between R4m and R6m a month on bribes.
On Thursday, Agrizzi told how millions of rand were stored in the vault and replenished almost weekly because of the number of bribes paid.
“What is the order of chicken today?” was code for the amount of money that had to be restocked. “My hands are pretty bruised from all the years of dropping money in the drop safe,” Agrizzi said...