Businessman who blew the whistle on a South African government bribery scandal gets plea deal

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — A businessman who confessed to being a fixer who delivered bribes to South African government officials, lawmakers and others in a corruption scheme that enraged the nation avoided jail time in a plea deal announced Thursday by state prosecutors.

Angelo Agrizzi, who provided dramatic testimony at an inquiry into government corruption in 2019, was sentenced Thursday to 40 years in prison. However, the sentence was suspended on condition that he cooperate with investigations, the National Prosecuting Authority said.

His and other testimony during the Zondo Commission detailed an era of widespread government corruption under the leadership of former President Jacob Zuma, who had already resigned in 2018 because of graft allegations.

For weeks in early 2019, Agrizzi became the most famous man in South Africa as he testified how part of his job as chief operating officer at a facilities management company involved delivering bags of cash and organizing favors for a then-cabinet minister, senior government officials and other politicians in the then-ruling African National Congress party to secure lucrative government contracts and influence.

Agrizzi testified that the cash was sometimes delivered concealed in folded newspapers or packed in gray bags that were passed to politicians. He claimed he kept a little black book noting all the bribes.

His plea deal relates specifically to cases involving the former commissioner and deputy commissioner of South Africa’s Department of Corrections and a former ruling party lawmaker, who are all charged with receiving bribes from Agrizzi to give the company he worked for large contracts to provide services to prisons.

Agrizzi pleaded guilty to three counts of corruption and one count of money laundering in his deal with prosecutors. His former company, Bosasa, allegedly secured over $100 million in government contracts through bribes to those two corrections department officials.

The company’s chief executive officer, who Agrizzi alleged controlled the bribery scheme, died in a car crash months after Agrizzi’s testimony, and his death has been clouded in suspicion after a private pathology report ordered by his family found he was dead before his car hit a pillar near Johannesburg’s main international airport.

The Zondo Commission looking into government corruption ran from 2018-2022 and interviewed hundreds of witnesses, but only a few of those implicated in wrongdoing have been prosecuted and South African authorities have been criticized for allowing many connected to the ANC party to seemingly avoid charges.

Several other companies and businessmen were accused of bribing politicians.

Former President Zuma, who led Africa’s most developed economy from 2009-2018, was convicted of contempt of court for refusing to testify at the commission amid allegations he allowed a family of Indian businessmen to exert influence over him and his government through another bribery scandal.

Zuma was charged in 2021 with corruption, racketeering, fraud, tax evasion and money laundering in separate allegations relating to the late 1990s and early 2000s. That case hasn’t yet gone to trial.

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