The Godfather African

money.

Prologue

Miloš & Milaash & Milo

I was digging a hole. Not for the first time. Here in Johannesburg it seems to me that it’s almost a common thing. Although it’s not a hole for the flowers in the garden. But quite a big pit somewhere in the bushland.

I just take the car, put a pickaxe, shovel, machete in it, and drive off to the bushland. It’s up to me which place I choose. I’m not going to tell anyone about the hole. Just Radek. He’s going to get a detailed description of the place on the map, or I’ll take him right there and show it to him. And then it’s over for me.

We don’t talk about it anymore. If anyone found out about it, Radek would pretend not to know anything about it. After all, he wasn’t the one who dug the hole.

It’s not important what it’s going to be used for. But I’m sure it’ll find its use sooner or later. You bet. There are people who dig holes, people who fill them with something, and people who prefer to forget about them to be on the safe side.

Radek is a respectable man, of course. Although there are a couple of murders, extortions and beaten or missing people around him, nobody has pinned anything on him. So his hands are clean.

But people like me are up to their neck in the shit. I’m saddled with all the dirty work. I dig holes, drive Radek to business dealings, protect him, collect protection money, and sometimes I beat somebody to a pulp. It’s because of Radek, of course. Sometimes I also forge some documents, such as account statements. I blackmail someone from time to time, and I get drugs as well.

In short, I work for Radovan Krejčíř, a gangster who fled the Czech Republic in 2005 and who got as far as here, the Republic of South Africa, via the Seychelles in 2007.

Radovan worked his way up to a real boss here. Although he’s been here for less than five years now, he’s got a privileged position and strengthened his authority in this time. Mainly in the underworld.

I don’t want to say that he’s taken control of organised crime here. He has taken control of the local gangsters. Here it’s not like the way they do things in Italy or America. There are Mafiosos, hitmen here. There are a lot of them. But organised crime in the real sense of the word was introduced here by Radek. He’s given it some rules and structure.

You might be asking how he managed to do that.

If you have dough or at least if you pretend to have it, they worship you like a god here. For money you can do absolutely anything here. You can buy drugs, weapons, forged papers, even a false identity. Johannesburg is rife with corruption. If Radek does have a good nose for anything, it’s for corrupted officers, politicians and cops. Now he’s the boss of Johannesburg’s underworld. And he makes short work of it.

xxxx

Well, I’ve forgotten to introduce myself. My name’s Miloš. And the surname? I’d rather not mention it. It’ll be safer for you. If you don’t know my surname, you’ll sleep better.

I was born in the Czech Republic, I used to be an illicit moneychanger, then a businessman and also criminal. And now I’m… Up to now I’ve been Krejčíř’s right-hand man. In the normal structure of organised crime, I’d hold a distinguished position of Consigliere, an advisor on strategic issues. Or rather Capo Bastone, which means underboss.

But for Krejčíř I do everything. I advise him, I protect him, I dig holes. At home they called me Miloš; here in Johannesburg they mispronounce it and call me ‘Milaash’ or ‘Milo’. When I was young, I was nicknamed Van Damme after the Belgian action film star from the 1980s. Because I did karate and taekwondo. I could even do the legendary splits that Van Damme used to do.

Here in the RSA friends call me Milo or Speedy Gonzáles. Because I’m as fast as a motor mouse. But cops won’t call me other names than Hitman. That’s something like a hired killer. But they’re wrong about it. I don’t kill. I just do dirty work for Krejčíř, which is brought to a complete end by others.

xxxx

If you want to understand what’s going on around Radovan Krejčíř in the Republic of South Africa, it’s not enough to read the newspapers and listen to the comments by the person involved himself. If you do this, you’ll have it all mixed up in a moment. You won’t be able to distinguish what is true, how this or that fraud or murder came to happen and what motivation Krejčíř or his associates or rivals had.

Although articles in the media are a good guideline to the affairs, they’re not sufficient to understand all the events. Krejčíř’s statements are no doubt important, but they’re not enough to judge the acts impartially.

Information sources in the police and secret services will give you a certain amount of information that you won’t find out officially, but it’s still just fragments which don’t give the overall picture.

Conversations with people from the underworld will enable you to understand the relations and motives, but even so you’re still standing in front of closed doors, behind which the actual reality is hidden.

Only someone who knows Krejčíř well, who has experienced all the significant moments with him, who is an eyewitness to a number of stories and events, can give you access to this hidden chamber.

For me, this key to knowledge was a man whom I had met only recently and at first knew only by the nickname the ‘Boy from the South’.

‘If you really want to know what happened in the RSA, meet the boy who worked for Radek there. What’s his name? The Boy from the South. If he likes, he’ll tell you his name,’ my information source, who knows more than anyone else about the world of organised crime, told me.

xxxx

It took a few weeks. And the negotiations were complicated. It’s all about building trust and having friends who will vouch for you.

The Boy from the South came to the first appointment along with his girlfriend. She was a charming foreigner, brunette with big dark eyes and with the figure of a model.

The girl was from the RSA. At that moment, I didn’t have the faintest idea that she would be another important key to understanding all the essential things that were going on around Krejčíř in the RSA.

xxxx

The Boy from the South turned out to be Miloš. A short man in his forties, but fit, thanks to doing sports. He had dark glasses on his balding head. Otherwise, quite a normal guy, whose face you would forget in a moment as it didn’t stick out in a crowd in any way. Maybe just his arms were extraordinarily big, but this was obviously connected with the fact that he used to be a professional swimmer and practised martial arts when he was young.

Miloš started as a minor illicit moneychanger who sold cigarettes, alcohol and pottery near frequented roads during the socialist era in Czechoslovakia. In the early 1990s he worked for ‘hat sellers’, who was a special bunch of modern entrepreneurs running small souvenir shops in the most lucrative places in the historic centre of Prague and who made money mainly on selling knick-knacks, T-shirts and different kinds of caps and fur hats to foreigners.

xxxx

Shortly after the revolution in 1989, this business enabled you to make big money fast. However, it had its maladies, too. Hat sellers were among the first to become victims of racketeering. The Russian or Ukrainian mafia just came and demanded 50 per cent of the profits, or else they would smash up the shop.

Miloš wasn’t afraid of them, so he started to get a good reputation in his profession.

Sometimes it was necessary to collect the debts from the clients, and Miloš was quite good at this, too. His bosses liked him. He was no brute force. He could deal with people and give them a talking-to.

While working for the ‘hat sellers’ he experienced having a gunman at his head for the first time in his life. It happened when some nutters wanted to extort money from one of the hat seller bosses. But for Miloš and his boss it turned out fine in the end. They agreed on settling the relations and the problems stopped. ‘Since then I’ve always kept my eyes open and tried to be faster. So that it’s not me who has a shooter at his head, but rather my opponents,’ Miloš told me to begin with.

xxxx

Later Miloš got to the higher circles of organised crime. He was offered work abroad as a chauffeur and bodyguard for a rich boss from the group doing international trade in narcotics, and the gang was mixed up with hash, ecstasy and also coke. And they controlled traffic in drugs in one part of Europe.

This contract lasted three years. Then the guy and his pals were arrested. And so was Miloš. He was in danger of spending over ten years in prison, but in the end got four and finally did ‘only’ 29 months. Since then, he’s been a good boy. Only that he’s co-operated with ‘K’, the most common nickname for Radovan Krejčíř.

xxxx

He met K years ago, besides other things thanks to drugs. When Krejčíř was still in the Czech Republic, raging like a black hand, he sometimes had an urge to take a snort of coke.

K is said to have invented his own special expression for that. If he needed coke, he said he would like to talk to George Flour. Don’t look for any complicated thoughts here. It was Krejčíř’s immediate idea. It’s just that flour means coke. And George means the supplier. In this case it was Miloš.

Miloš served as George Flour for K in the RSA as well. Of course it was only now and then. Krejčíř is no drug addict. It’s just that there ‘in the south’ he started to lead a dissolute life. He simply found himself among thugs, killers and fraudsters. And to survive this mess he had to get it out of his head from time to time. Otherwise it would drive him crazy.

xxxx

I had to promise Miloš not to make his surname public. ‘You can take notes, but I don’t want you to record me,’ he said.

Although I might have found the request quite polite, it actually sounded pretty stern. I didn’t even try to negotiate and left the Dictaphone in my bag. There was so much information, names and stories that the pen nearly burnt in my hand. In a few moments I had even filled my notepad. We were sitting in that restaurant for quite some time, and I took notes on everything I had at hand. Even on the white margins of the newspaper and on the restaurant bill.

It was clear that Miloš and Shimo – that was his wife’s name – weren’t mere fragments in the patchwork of stories, but keyholders to the room that Krejčíř wouldn’t let anyone in to. Because if he did, he would have to confess to his criminal past and own up to the crazy life he had decided to live.

xxxx

There were many more appointments with Miloš and Shimo afterwards. It doesn’t happen to me very often, but for each of them I had to get a new notepad. Miloš was helpful and patient. He initiated me into the secrets of gangster life and their way of thinking.

Sometimes I found that I had stopped writing and was just gazing at him incredulously. Especially if I wanted to understand the workings of the gangsters’ minds.

‘Sometimes Radek charged me with weird tasks. For instance, he sent me a message: ‘Drive to my house and switch on the lights in the kitchen so that it looks like there’s someone there. And leave my mobile on there as well,’ Miloš told me.

‘Why did he want you to go to his residence and switch on the lights?’ I asked naively.

‘He wanted to have an alibi. Perhaps he was somewhere he shouldn’t be at that moment. If by chance anyone wanted to associate him with anything bad later, he could say that he was at home,’ Miloš said.

To be able to fully understand this demi-monde or underworld in the slighest, you would have to live in it. Which is something no reasonable man would like to do. And so we have no other choice but to have coffee with people like Miloš, hold our breath and plunge into the muckof it.

But don’t be afraid. We’ll come up from it again. Unlike Radovan Krejčíř.

xxxx

Before you immerse yourselves in this book, see the film Blood Diamond, made in 2006. The film got five Oscar nominations. The lead role of a diamond smuggler and a former mercenary is played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

The film portrays the reality of the civil war in Sierra Leone. It’s a kind of harsh fairytale. But that’s not the point. Stop the film after about 55 minutes. Apart from DiCaprio, there’s another important role played by a journalist. And after about 55 minutes she comes to a large refugee camp. In front of the entryway a ‘gorilla’ approaches her.

When I say a ‘gorilla’, it’s just a gorilla. A black man in military uniform. Girded with a submachine gun. His hand is as big as two normal human hands. His shoulders look as if someone had blown them up with a bicycle pump and didn’t know when to stop. And in between these drop hammers a giant head sticks out, which merges in with the neck, so it’s not clear where his loaf begins and the body ends.

The journalist shows him her card and gives him the list of people she’s looking for in the camp. The ‘gorilla’ takes a look in the document, says that he’ll see to it and leaves. This is the end of the minirole for the ‘gorilla’.

So let me introduce him. The ‘gorilla’ from the film Blood Diamond is Big Martin. A former general from the Congo who lives in Johannesburg. He works for a renowned security agency here. He works as a bouncer in luxurious discos and bars in town. At the door of one bar, Big Martin met Radovan Krejčíř. K was ecstatic about him.

They became friends and sometimes he gave him a job. He occasionally hired him as a bodyguard. When K needed to scare someone or to show his business partners that he was the one who has the upper hand, he took Big Martin along to cover his back.

Big Martin really enjoyed a reputation of being crazy. During the war in Congo he even ate human flesh. But, as he always added, he only ate ‘the meat of white people’.

To have one’s back covered by Big Martin was half the success.

Part I – UWE ‘THE PORSCHE’ GEMBALLA

The German businessman Uwe Gemballa breathed in the warm air, looked around the arrival hall and headed for the first bar he could see. He needed to have some refreshment. The flight from Dubai to Johannesburg lasted more than eight hours.

It was 8th February 2010.

At the bar a white man in a cap came up to him.

‘Are you Mr Gemballa?’

‘Oh yes. Are you here to pick me up?’

‘Exactly,’ said the man.

Gemballa had no reason to mistrust him.

In the RSA he was planning to start a branch of his successful tuning firm for luxurious cars, and the businessman Jerom Saphir, who he arranged everything with, was incredibly kind and helpful.

‘Are you from Mr Saphir?’ Gemballa wanted to make sure.

‘Of course. Jerom told me to take care of your safety. Here in Jo’burg you never know,’ the man grinned.

The tattoo on his arm stuck out from under the sleeve of his T-shirt. When he noticed that Gemballa spotted it, he remarked: ‘We’re with the police. Jerom hires us to do such services. Don’t worry.’

Gemballa smiled and followed him.

xxxx

In front of the OR Tambo Airport there was a dark BMW waiting.

‘Are we going to the hotel first?’ Gemballa asked.

‘Of course. You’re going to stay in a very pleasant area of Bedfordview. It’s one of the best places in Johannesburg,’ the man said.

The car was full up.

There were two other men sitting. They weren’t speaking at all. They were just staring dully in front of them. Their heads were shaved and they had arms like gladiators’ ones.

Gemballa’s shoulder-length fair hair started to ripple near the open window. He was famous for his casual hairstyle. As well as for his broad smile.

His blue eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. And he looked satisfied.

xxxx

They only drove a few kilometres from the airport. And when they were driving through the town of Edenvale, suddenly they turned into a street where there were houses, but no hotel.

Gemballa was confused. He started and wanted to say something.

But one of the bodyguards put a gun to his waist and said: ‘Shut up and don’t do anything.’

The car drove into the yard of a house that was situated in quite a busy street, at 64 1st Avenue.

They forced Gemballa to get out of the car.

As soon as they got him into the villa, they grabbed him by the throat and started beating him.

Gemballa lost consciousness for a moment.

xxxx

When he came round, he was lying on a bed in a child’s room. He was tied up and couldn’t move at all. There were a lot of toys in the room. Only in the corner there was a man, who resembled the Hulk, sitting. Only he wasn’t green but as black as coal.

‘Help me, please. I’ve done nothing wrong. It must be a mistake,’ Gemballa said.

‘Hulk’ stood up and brought his colleagues.

And all hell broke loose. They tormented and tortured him.

xxxx

The kidnappers forced Gemballa to transfer one million euros from his account in Germany to the RSA.

Gemballa tried to explain that he wasn’t able to do this over the phone and that he would have to go to his bank in Germany personally, but imagine saying this to a gang of nutcases who might be able to read a few lines in the newspaper, but otherwise are practically illiterate.

In the end they agreed that Gemballa’s wife should order the payment in Germany. And they put a phone to Gemballa’s ear, so that he could call his wife. He had a gun at the other ear.

Gemballa asked his wife to transfer one million euros to an account in Johannesburg, whose number he would dictate to her, immediately. If she had asked why, he was to answer that he had had an accident and needed to pay for the damage urgently.

But Gemballa spoke English to his wife, Christiane. This was a signal that something was going on. If it had been a normal situation, he would have spoken German to her. This way his wife knew that Uwe was in danger.

As soon as they finished speaking, Christiane immediately called her lawyer and he informed the police about it. The German police notified Interpol. When they tried to ring back on the mobile Gemballa had called from, the phone was already off.

The wheels of crime started moving as fast as Gemballa’s tuned cars. Unlike them, crime had no brakes.

xxxx

Two days later the kidnappers realised that the money wouldn’t be sent to the account. One of the kidnappers came to the room where Gemballa was and wrapped insulating tape around all his body. He taped up his mouth and nose, and tied his hands and feet. Then he sat on his chest. Gemballa was in this position for four minutes until he lost consciousness.

Then the German businessman suffocated.

The kidnappers wrapped the body in black PVC and carried it to the car.

They put in spades, shovels and gloves, which they had bought in the local Builder Warehouse shortly before. The nearest police station was just under 400 metres from the crime scene. Except that no-one had noticed the suspicious behaviour of a group of people in the house.

The black BMW drove out of the yard and headed for Pretoria with Gemballa’s corpse in the boot.

xxxx

The car stopped in the mountainous area outside of the town of Atteridgeville, just a few kilometres past Pretoria. Here the kidnappers dug a hole. One of the gangsters took a gun and shot Gemballa in the head, just to be sure.

Only then did they throw the body into the grave and bury it.

Atteridgeville is situated in the place where the South African nuclear research centre once was. This area is called Phelindaba, which means ‘the end of the story’ in the South African language of isiZulu.

xxxx

Uwe Gemballa used to have a renowned tuning company in Germany that converted luxurious cars, mainly Porsches. Gemballa gave them higher performance, better design and glossy looks. Then he sold the cars tuned in this way to crazy upstarts, car nuts who wouldn’t hesitate to pay even twenty million crowns for one car. There were top footballers, Hollywood stars, European aristocracy, Arabian sheikhs and wealthy Russians among Gemballa’s clients.

He also sold a few cars to Radovan Krejčíř. But it was still at the time when Krejčíř was in Prague and robbing the state of taxes, when he had turnovers worth billions of crowns in oil trade and was siphoning off funds from the state enterprise Čepro. At that time he had kettles full of money to squander.

Now he had to cut back. The costs of living as a fugitive were high.

And so Krejčíř only had one Porsche Cayenne sent to Johannesburg by Gemballa. And he had another tuned by a local chap, who was following Gemballa’s instructions.

But no-one had any idea that Krejčíř and Gemballa had agreed that one of the cars the Geman businessman was supposed to supply was to be used as a secret deposit box for one million euros as well.

xxxx

Krejčíř had his emergency reserves on accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. But it was risky to send it to an account in the RSA. The secret services that were still after Radek would withhold it. And even if it worked, he would have to pay tax on it in Johannesburg. And paying taxes is something K really doesn’t like doing.

So the agreement was simple. ‘Dear Uwe, you will build secret boxes into the door sills and panelling of my tuned Porsche. You will put one million euros in cash in them and send me the car. In return, I will have a branch of your tuning company established here, which will supply rich Afrikaners with your scented cars. I will pay you the rest in diamonds, which you need for your new idea – to make cars with a diamond coating.’

xxxx

Gemballa was really considering representation of his