out and people were beginning to warn me to steer clear of her. I tried to remain civil at all times, whereas her texts to me became increasingly vitriolic. Things culminated in an attempt by her to extort money from me, asking me to pay her as a ‘source’ for SARS, or else she was going to release all text exchanges between us. I refused to be blackmailed and said so to her. She lied to me, saying that she had found an anonymous recording device delivered to her on 27 May 2014, supposedly with me ‘bragging’ that she was a ‘source’ for SARS whom SARS didn’t have to pay. I denied having said this and questioned the recording’s authenticity.33 She was subsequently never able to produce it when asked to do so and, ultimately, in 2015, admitted under oath that she had lied about this.34
What I didn’t know at the time, and only came to discover much later, was that Walter, just days before, had instituted legal action against BAT plc in the United Kingdom through her attorneys, demanding £5 million from them. She accused BAT of bribery, corruption, money-laundering and industrial espionage and threatened that should they not pay the money by a specified time into a lawyer’s trust account, she intended suing them in the United Kingdom. In this demand she threatened to sue the SSA at the same time for the same things.35 So at this point in time, all the oceans on the planet could not wash BAT plc, BATSA or the Tobacco Task Team of their sins.
On 27 May, she flipped again. This time, she went back to the fold of the Illicit Tobacco Task Team. According to a document Walter compiled later, Chris Burger had told her that her leaking of information to the Mail & Guardian and the Sunday Times, and their subsequent exposés of the Illicit Tobacco Task Team and BAT, had placed the latter in a difficult position and that she was on her own. But, according to Walter, there was a way out for her. Burger and Niemann of the task team then met with two unnamed National Prosecuting Authority officials and cut a deal. Walter was to withdraw her legal action against BAT plc and her threatened legal action against the task team. In return for this, she was to be given some kind of blanket amnesty from prosecution for all crimes she might have committed and would then receive their assistance against SARS and me.36 The Illicit Tobacco Task Team were once more the knights in shining armour, and SARS was suddenly the bad guy, as were Carnilinx and the other FITA members. Another flip.
The very next day, 28 May 2014, Walter launched an attack on me by way of an email, making all sorts of false allegations. This set off a sequence of events at SARS that soon presented all of my and other enemies of SARS with an opportunity to attack the institution from all sides.
Her allegations and what followed in their wake had disastrous consequences, with over 55 managers and over 500 skilled staff leaving the institution: the restructuring that followed and the subsequent underperformance of SARS left the government poorer for many years to come.
On 27 June 2014, Walter upheld her end of the deal with the task team and wrote to BAT plc and withdrew her legal demand for £5 million, blaming me for supposedly causing a division between BAT and their local counterparts. All was forgiven. Suddenly, BAT and the Illicit Tobacco Task team were the good guys again and SARS were the dogs.
Walter’s allegations against SARS were rather underdeveloped at first. Her attack on the institution would later morph and adapt as the wind blew, and as more enemies of SARS began to operate in support of each other, some in tandem and others simply using the opportunity she presented. This would culminate in a narrative that turned a rather nondescript, tiny investigative unit at SARS into a fictitious ‘rogue’ intelligence unit that was involved in a host of supposed illegal and unlawful activities. It was all hogwash, but the claims were bolstered by one-sided ‘internal probes’ and leaks to the media by ‘anonymous sources and intelligence officers’, all of which basically sought to confirm the ‘rogue unit narrative’.
Walter had opened the door, and others then kicked it in. The attack suited everybody, including Walter and her cohorts in the Illicit Tobacco Task Team, BATSA and BAT. All their sins were simply ignored and suppressed and never saw the light of day during the subsequent ‘probes’.
I only really awoke to elements of the rationale behind the ‘rogue unit narrative’ when Walter began claiming, under oath and in letters to the media and through press releases and legal notices, that I had unlawfully intercepted her communications since May 2011, which is a period of about three years prior to our having met. I knew then, instinctively, that there had to be a reason why she would make such a specific allegation. And then it dawned on me that I still had a copy of the memory stick lying in a basket on the top of my fridge with all her data on it. I began to work through it, and came to discover evidence which severely implicated her, members of the Illicit Tobacco Task Team, some tobacco manufacturers and the private security company FSS in a host of criminal activities, none of which she had ever told me or Rose or Sole about.
It was clear to me, then, that she needed to discredit that data. She needed to provide some or other explanation of how I had possession of it, and she needed to cover herself and others at all costs. If ever I was to produce the copy as evidence of their wrongdoings, she needed a means to say that I had obtained this evidence unlawfully.
Behind the scenes, she needed to cover the tracks too. On 8 August 2014, Walter met with Niemann, Burger and Jonker at a café in Brooklyn, Pretoria. In a subsequent email to them, she basically admitted to having given me access to the data and claimed she had also given it to the Hawks. I have no doubt that the three members of the task team were suddenly all very worried about what I was going to do with the data. And this gave further impetus to their joining in what later became known as the ‘rogue unit narrative’. They all had to ensure that nobody ever looked at that data in detail.
On this same day in August Walter also sent off an email to Malcolm Rees, who had, it seems, suddenly become unbothered by the allegations she threw at him and the Sunday Times earlier that year. This would form the basis for his first front-page article entitled ‘Love Affair Rocks SARS’ on 10 August 2014.37 This article was the precursor of a series that originated and developed the ‘rogue unit’ narrative. After this article appeared, I and, later, others at SARS became fair game to everybody and anybody that had a grievance about us.
Walter’s ‘confessions’ to Carnilinx on 1 February 2013 would later become the basis upon which the company took on the behemoth BATSA publicly, by applying for an interdict against them and Walter in August 2014. By this time Carnilinx was still her enemy. In reply, Walter attacked them on a range of personal issues and also accused me and the acting SARS commissioner, Ivan Pillay, of having conspired with Carnilinx to bring the interdict against her and BATSA, in exchange for tax leniency. Pure nonsense, but that was how the wind blew for her then. Carnilinx’s directors, according to her, were organised criminals and SARS was just plain bad for conspiring with them.
Predictably so, perhaps, following the interdict application Walter soon made peace with Carnilinx, agreeing to work with them against BATSA, BAT plc, TISA and SARS. Pretty soon, she was on retainer with Carnilinx, and apparently being paid the sum of R50,000 per month via another attorney’s billing system.38 But this truce didn’t last long either.39 By 2015, when it came for her to sign an affidavit in which she admitted that while acting as an attorney for Carnilinx she had betrayed some of their business information to BAT plc, she flipped again and refused to do so. This document, unsigned but compiled by Walter herself, concluded as follows: ‘I further admit the following. I was at all times an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa and owed Carnilinx a fiduciary duty of trust. I breached the fiduciary duty of trust in that I disclosed confidential information of Carnilinx’s business information to BAT UK. I received financial reward for disclosing confidential information to BAT UK, from BAT UK. I was offered a financial reward. BAT UK’s representatives, Colin Daniels (Denyer) and Allan Evans, offered and indeed paid me a reward for acting improperly. BAT UK, duly represented by Allan Evans and Colin Daniels, were at all material times aware that I was the attorney acting for and on behalf of Carnilinx and that I was the attorney for various other cigarette manufactures and that I was the chairperson for FITA. I now accept, and understand that my conduct, at the time, was improper.’40 Soon enough, in the light of this information, Carnilinx registered a criminal case against TISA, BAT plc, BATSA, Walter, and officials of the Illicit Tobacco Task Team and SARS in 2015, confirming that the honeymoon was now over for all concerned.41 Then they