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“The long con: The Daily Maverick’s [Serbian] ’mafiaBrkic’ connections and currencies” – Part 4

https://falcons.org.za/insight/the-long-con-the-daily-mavericks-mafiabrkic-connections-and-currencies-bae160f2-fd40-4f10-9e35-53efaa97d6eb/
November 15, 2021

Paulus (Paul) Stemmet

Stemmet was to have been a Section 204 state witness in the Selebi corruption trial. In 2009, he signed a series of detailed sworn statements where he admitted his role in a number of serious crimes. In one statement he confessed to planting a bomb at Microsoft’s South African headquarters so that they would increase, instead of decrease their spend on the security services he was providing.

Apart from his admitted links to serious crimes involving Selebi, Stemmet was also a close associate of a convicted drug trafficker, Agliotti. Stemmet confessed to planting 40g of cocaine at Tigon director Gary Porritt’s Pietermaritzburg home in 2000 or 2001.

He made it clear in his sworn statement that he was instructed to plant the cocaine by Varejes, who was an arch-enemy of Porrit, as the latter had exposed Porrit to a criminal investigation by the tax authorities.

Stemmet was to have been a state witness against Varejes. However, the State withdrew the charges in April 2013. A few weeks later, in what seems like a payback for the charges being dropped, Stemmet joined the board of one of Vareje’s companies, Card Holder Location Verification (Pty) Limited, a position he shared with The Daily Maverick co-founder Charalambous.

Varejes employee – Mark Pamensky

Pamensky spent a lot of time testifying at the Zondo Commission. However, his version of what he did or did not do to assist the Gupta underworld was in stark contrast with the reality of other testimony.

Pamensky’s affair with the infamous Gupta family, started when he attended the proceeds-of-crime funded Gupta wedding at Sun City, where a couple of hundred guests were illegally flown into an Air Force base in Pretoria and blue-light convoyed to Sun City.

Pamensky claimed the invitation was sent to his boss Varejes, but he elected to attend the wedding as he was single. Not long after, Pamensky was appointed as a director of Gupta front companies, Shiva Uranium and Oakbay Resources.

Whilst at Oakbay, Pamensky miraculously landed a non-executive director’s position at Eskom where he lost no time in pushing deals that benefited the Gupta’s, to the tune of more than two 2 billion rand. He also regularly shared confidential Eskom information with his Gupta puppet masters, in breach of his fiduciary duty to Eskom.

Brkic did not respond to questions sent to him. We contacted Forensics For Justice for comment, but at the time of writing, we had not received a response. – Research Credit: Forensics For Justice.