To Catch a Cop

Book excerpt: This book is an account of forensic consultant Paul O'Sullivan's role in helping nail South Africa's most powerful policeman: Jackie Selebi, former police chief and head of Interpol. Based on thousands of pages of e-mails, statements, affidavits, letters, press reports, court records, and transcripts as well as interviews with O'Sullivan himself, this version provides a perspective from his point of view as a key player in the saga. While O'Sullivan's name consistently appears in almost every key breaking story around the Selebi matter, his role has often been downplayed. The Jackie Selebi story, and the satellite narratives that orbited it, is a truly remarkable chronicle that played itself out in different layers and strata of South African society. The characters that populate it, apart from Jackie Selebi, include the president of the country at the time and his political rival; myriad crooked, corrupt businessmen; a gallery of rotten, very senior rogue cops; a phalanx of undercover intelligence operatives; two-bit hired guns; scrap metal dealers; drug and human traffickers; international criminal syndicates; and a cast of thousands of common petty thugs and criminals. Paul O'Sullivan is no suave James Bond in a tuxedo, equipped with special equipment; when dealing with criminals he can be abrasive, brusque and uncompromising. This is a real account of how the criminal underworld intersects with law enforcement and politics.