Former Crime Intelligence officer Paul Scheepers faces imprisonment after conviction in landmark trial

In 2010, a company run by then Crime Intelligence officer Paul Scheepers obtained a contract to provide debugging services for the Western Cape government.

Five years later, this culminated in a political skirmish, with the ANC accusing the DA’s Helen Zille, the province’s premier at the time, of spying on the ANC.

Zille hit back, saying: “This is an outright lie. It has no foundation whatsoever. I saw Scheepers once, briefly, when I handed him my cellphone, and he handed it back to my secretary afterwards. I never once discussed spying or surveillance with him, and that was never his brief.”

The saga also involved allegations that a senior policeman was colluding with gangsters.

It eventually fizzled out, but Scheepers later faced accusations about the private work he was doing outside of the South African Police Service (SAPS).

He was arrested after his business in Cape Town was raided in May 2015.

And last week, on Friday, 30 January, in a trial that dragged on for nearly 11 years, he was convicted of various crimes in the Bellville Specialised Commercial Crimes Court in Cape Town.

Landmark convictions

The convictions relate to fraud, money laundering and contravening legislation linked to the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (Psira) and the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-related Information Act (Rica).

According to the Western Cape’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), the Psira and Rica convictions against Scheepers were the first of their kind.

The NPA this week said the State would ask the court to sentence Scheepers to imprisonment.

The case was postponed to 10 April for sentencing.

Read more: Police Minister Bheki Cele intervenes amid fresh claims of ‘rogue’ operations in Cape Town cop unit

The NPA this week said that Nicolette Bell, the Director of Public Prosecutions in the province, “applauded the investigation and prosecution … in a complicated case. The misuse of police authority, unauthorised private security operations, and unlawful possession of surveillance technology pose serious risks to public trust and national security.”

According to the NPA, Scheepers was acquitted of some charges, including fraud for allegedly failing to disclose that he was a SAPS employee when he bid for a provincial government contract.

This, presumably, was in relation to the 2010 DA Western Cape debugging contract.

However, he was found guilty of failing to disclose he was employed by the SAPS while providing surveillance services to others, and of acting as a private investigator without the necessary Psira registration.

He was also found guilty of having a surveillance device known as a “grabber” without ministerial exemption and of the “use of multiple accounts to conceal R5.59-million in proceeds of unlawful activities”.

Moonlighting and ‘money laundering’

Scheepers ran the company Eagle Eye Solutions.

It was alleged that from 2003, he had worked for it as a private investigator but was not registered with Psira, as is required by law, and did not have authorisation for this work from his employer, the SAPS.

The NPA said, “When he applied to conduct private work while employed as a Crime Intelligence officer, he stated that the type of business that he conducts is ‘audio restoration, cellphone forensics, building of tracking units and service and sales of software in respect of cellphones.’

“The applications for private work were not approved due to a conflict of interest.”

According to the NPA, the income Scheepers received while doing Eagle Eye work was “illicit” and resulted in him being convicted of money laundering.

As for the “grabber”, the State’s case was that “during 2009 to 2010, [he] purchased, possessed and sold listed equipment … which can determine and monitor the geographical location of a person, vehicle or object, without being exempted by the minister”.

In other words, Scheepers obtained and sold a grabber without the necessary permission, thereby contravening Rica legislation.

Complicated case

The Western Cape NPA said the State had faced “challenges” in the case.

Scheepers failed in an attempt to get a court order declaring a search warrant invalid (this related to the raid on his business in May 2015).

He also wanted items confiscated during the raid returned.

In 2018, Scheepers brought an application for a permanent stay of prosecution, which he later withdrew.

His application for the recusal of a magistrate, meanwhile, was successful.

Read more: Cops and Mobsters — the many murky claims of Western Cape police officers cosying up to gangsters

In 2020, Scheepers brought applications for further particulars from the State, which were responded to.

“[He also] made a further request to declassify classified documents and information, which he alleged is available to support his defence in relation to the charges,” the NPA said.

“Police informed the accused that classified information can only be declassified if the accused provides particulars as to what information he wanted declassified.

“The State maintained that there was no information/files, or documents to be declassified as they did not exist. He abandoned the request.”

Scheepers was told he could testify about the “factual matrix he alleged existed” and that this would be in camera.

He eventually “closed his case without testifying”.

‘Senior cop and drug lords’

Scheepers’ founding affidavit in his unsuccessful 2015 application to have the search warrant relating to the Eagle Eye raid declared unlawful stated that, aside from his work as a police officer, he started a private business in 2003, specialising in “cellphone and advanced digital forensic techniques”.

He was of the view that the Eagle Eye work would not clash with his police job and said his application for remunerative work had been approved.

Scheepers said that between 2003 and 2015, he did his Eagle Eye work “unhindered”, all the while fulfilling his Crime Intelligence role.

His affidavit said: “During early 2015, three of my informers reported to me on various occasions that a high-ranking officer in the SAPS regularly attends meetings with very well-known drug-lords and criminal gang bosses … in the Western Cape.

“During such meetings, discussions took place about undermining rival gangs and the way of ensuring distribution of drugs in the Western Cape.

“The senior officer, on several occasions, received huge amounts of money for the exchange and delivery of drugs.”

Scheepers said he had supplied this information to his provincial police commander, and two months later, in May 2015, his Eagle Eye office was raided.

He claimed that he was told it was the senior officer his informers identified as meeting with gang bosses who ordered the raid.

Daily Maverick has reported that, outside the court process, questions were raised about whether Scheepers’ informers might have been coached to make statements to tarnish the reputation (thereby muddying the investigations) of the senior police officer.

The officer was believed to be Jeremy Vearey, the Western Cape’s detective head, who was controversially fired in May 2021.

Vearey has an ANC background.

Political spy accusations

This is the part of the Scheepers saga that loops back to the ANC and Zille.

In 201o the DA-led Western Cape provincial government awarded Eagle Eye a contract to debug cellphones.

This developed into a controversy, following the May 2015 raid at Scheepers’s Eagle Eye office and his arrest.

In October 2015, Zille, in her capacity then as Western Cape premier, wrote a newsletter in which she alluded to Scheepers without naming him.

She said he alleged his equipment and documents were “unlawfully seized” after three informers gave him “sensational information asserting the involvement of high-ranking police officers in corruption, and of links between the drug trade, gangs and politics in the Western Cape”.

The following month, November 2015, the Western Cape’s ANC announced it was lodging a criminal complaint “against Zille for employing a private covert intelligence investigator to execute illegal communications surveillance work on state land and property”. (This was linked to Scheepers’ 2010 debugging contract.)

Later that same month, Zille wrote another newsletter in which she named Scheepers.

“He alleges his equipment was seized because he had established this sinister, politically motivated web of conspiracy between certain senior police officers, politicians and drug lords,” she said.

Read more: Western Cape: Zille still standing

Zille asserted that the Western Cape’s ANC leader at the time, Marius Fransman (who is no longer with the party), and allies “manufactured the story that I and/or the Western Cape government had hired Paul Scheepers to spy on the ANC”.

The ANC, Zille had added, “should be in the dock, answering very serious allegations about intercepting people’s calls, and of collusion with police and ganglords, to influence the 2016 election in this province”.

This political spy accusation exchange, however, never led to the arrest of any politician. DM