The Wonga Coup

by Adam Roberts

  Although everyone else recalls the party, Thatcher himself, oddly, later denied he threw one that Christmas. He says that neither Mann nor Wales attended a Christmas party, though he did have a celebration on New Year’s Eve. Mann was busy in his own large rented house, with sixteen guests, says Thatcher. None the less, several characters of the Wonga Coup did spend Christmas together in the Mother City just weeks before launching their plot.

  Thatcher had contact with other interesting individuals. Ely Calil was not in Cape Town that month, but Thatcher met him earlier in 2003. He says he also attended lunch with Mann at Calil’s home, but left soon after arriving. He was most interested in the décor of the millionaire’s Chelsea home: ‘I met Calil only twice, firstly in 1979 as a guest in his house and again a second time in mid 2003, for only the second time in twenty years, for tea at his London house. I left soon after arriving. I just wanted to see the house again. He has supremely good taste.’ In London Thatcher also knew Jeffrey Archer, the British novelist, and David Hart, a former adviser to his mother, who were both to be dragged into the story later on. In Cape Town he knew David Tremain ‘distantly’. He had met James Kershaw several times, he admitted, though he called these meetings ‘brief encounters’ and he did not consider Kershaw a friend.

  As for du Toit, he was in South Africa that Christmas, but did not mix with the high society of Cape Town. In George, a coastal resort nearby, however, another meeting was held. Steyl later told investigators that: ‘On landing in Cape Town and moving on to George, I saw Mark Thatcher again for the second time very briefly. We flew across to George where we met Nick du Toit.’ Steyl, Mann and du Toit went to a coffee shop in George, on 23 December, to discuss preparations for the coup. Du Toit warned that too many details were leaking. He had friends inside the South African Secret Service (SASS) who were telling him that his activities were under scrutiny. Johann Smith’s intelligence reports warning of a coup in Equatorial Guinea were circulating faster than Christmas cards.

  But du Toit’s worries were pushed aside. There was some discussion that the base of operations might be moved from South Africa. The mood should have been upbeat. Mann later recalled that ‘At Christmas 2003 funds were made available to me to go ahead. $400,000 of this money was my own.’ Perhaps the extra cash, partly, was courtesy of the two investor agreements signed in November between Logo Logistics (Mann’s company) and a Swiss company and a Lebanese one. Thatcher had also promised to fund a helicopter. So, for now, money woes were eased. But time was short. The idea of launching a coup in late January was dropped, but a new target date of mid February looked possible.

  Interviewed for this book, Thatcher suggests that even in January he still had no idea the helicopter he agreed to fund was to be used for mercenary activity. He believed, he repeats, that it was intended for an air ambulance business, or possibly to move executives around in west Africa. Steyl operated an air ambulance company in South Africa. Thatcher noted that Steyl had ‘warranted as a pre-condition to the investment that he had licences to operate in west Africa as an air ambulance company when, in fact, he had none’. Thatcher later considered suing Steyl for this lie.

  But according to Thatcher’s court documents, in December he ‘began to doubt Mann’s true intentions and suspected that Mann might be planning to become involved in mercenary activity in the west African region’. Despite his ‘misgivings’ he decided to invest. In early January, Thatcher deposited $20,000 into a bank account controlled by Steyl’s company, AAA Aviation, at a branch in Bethlehem. A few days later, on 16 January, he paid in another $255,000. Why did he do so, despite his suspicions? Presumably because he thought working with Mann might produce an adventure as well as a profit. ‘He thought he’d put his bum in the butter,’ says someone who knew him well.

  Steyl then used Thatcher’s money to charter a civilian helicopter that was owned, ultimately, by the South African government (which was therefore partly responsible for its use, argues Thatcher). It was flown from another coastal town, East London, to Walvis Bay in Namibia. This might have been the first stage of a trip to Equatorial Guinea, following the coastal route of the fishing trawler. And perhaps, by late January, Mann seriously thought of moving the base of operations to Namibia. Wales flew to Namibia soon afterwards, presumably to check that out. But the helicopter sat idle, and the plan of the coup plot changed. ‘In the end we decided it was too complicated and said, “Take it back”,’ recalls Crause Steyl. The idea of overthrowing Obiang at Malabo airport was dropped. After three weeks, the helicopter flew back to South Africa. None of Thatcher’s money was returned to him. Instead, early in March, $100,000 was transferred from Steyl’s AAA Aviation account to Mann’s Logo account. The helicopter Thatcher had helped to charter was, effectively, unused and some of his money had been appropriated. But those facts would not keep the former prime minister’s son out of trouble.

  12

  Money and Recruits

  ‘… a little tumult, now and then, is an agreeable quickener of sensation; such as a revolution, a battle, or an adventure of any lively description.’

  Lord Byron

  The month of January may be icy and miserable in New York, London or Madrid, but those smart and rich enough to spend it in Cape Town enjoy balmy days. It is a time to bask on the beach. At Simon Mann’s luxurious home the pool was in use. Mann threw at least one big garden party in January 2004, as usual mixing business and pleasure. He did it to raise money. A look at his bank accounts for this time show great activity. Some funding had become available in December, but he faced cash flow problems soon after. He spent money as quickly as it appeared. Mark Thatcher provided one source of funds. Thatcher admitted in court in South Africa that he suspected ‘Mann might be planning to become involved in mercenary activity in the west African region’ and that the helicopter he helped hire ‘might in fact be intended for use in such mercenary activity’. But he paid $275,000 to Crause Steyl for that helicopter, none the less. Around the same time Mann deposited $150,000 from one of his firms, Systems Design Limited, into Steyl’s account.

  Thatcher’s payments helped fill the kitty, but more was needed. So Mann took the risky step of appealing to other friends and even neighbours in his well-heeled neighbourhood. At the drinks party staff pottered with trays of champagne while Mann chatted up his guests. To some he asked a pointed question. Would they be interested in a good deal, a very good deal? In 2004 one visitor to Mann’s home told the Sunday Telegraph:

  It was a casual conversation at a drinks party around a swimming pool in January this year about ‘a security project’ at an African mine … It was all very casual and vague, but the hook was the quick profit. If you showed interest then you were invited to another meeting and given more details. Once Equatorial Guinea was mentioned, I declined and heard no more about it.

  Anyone keen was asked for $100,000, for which some were apparently promised a remarkable $1 million within ten weeks. Such a generous rate of return – tenfold in ten weeks – should have made most people suspicious. Mann could not generate such wealth by guarding a mine in Congo, so he explained some of his Equatorial Guinea plan to relative strangers. It was the sort of too-good-to-be-true opportunity that Nigerian con artists offer the gullible, often by email. When ordinary crooks do it, police call it an advance fee fraud, or a 419 scam. But it is also the sort of return coup plotters and financiers have long used. In this case there was the added temptation of oil concessions. There are all sorts of rumours about who invested. South African investigators thought a syndicate of smaller investors was arranged. They later issued charge sheets, yet to be withdrawn, against two British businessmen for helping fund the coup plot. A Chinese man living in Cape Town reportedly put in $50,000.

  James Kershaw, running Mann’s office, oversaw Mann’s accounts. He also let slip useful information to Nigel Morgan. In the first four months of the year Morgan produced ten intelligence reports about a coup – or, as he termed it, a ‘catalyst for regime cha
nge’ – in Equatorial Guinea. These were read by South African intelligence.

  Morgan gleaned more information from the inside, from Mann himself. They dined together twenty-two times in the months before the coup. On a typical night Mann proposed dinner at the Butcher Shop and Grill in Sandton, Johannesburg. After large tumblers of pink gin they moved on to steaks and heavy red wine, while chatting lightly and cracking jokes. Next they moved to cigars, port and whisky, staying late as the restaurateur tried to close. One moment it was trivial, then Mann would slip in serious questions. A thinly disguised discussion of his plot followed. Mann half-jokingly threatened to kill Morgan if he leaked a word. The next minute, however, he was asking more advice. It was, recalls Morgan, as if Mann were writing a film script and discussing fictional characters, not plotting a real event.

  Others compiled intelligence, too. Johann Smith had sighed with relief at the new year. He first feared an attack during New Year’s Eve, when drunken soldiers and politicians could not defend themselves against a mosquito let alone against an invasion force. But the big night passed with no more fireworks than usual. Yet Smith still sensed the pending coup. A document he produced, dated January 2004, described the ex-32 Battalion soldiers he thought part of the advance guard. Sergio Cardoso, who had worked with du Toit for months, had twice met a group of other veterans, including Victor Dracula, in Pretoria. They talked of Equatorial Guinea and the departure of a second fishing trawler. Ex-soldiers were flitting about west Africa, wrote Smith. One was ‘definitely acting as a “runner” for the Group of former 32 Bn members’. Smith gave a prescient warning. ‘Cardoso would, on his return, recruit a total of seventy-five ex-SADF [South African Defence Force] members, mainly from within the former 32 Bns and Special Forces ranks.’ They would later launch a coup. ‘These actions are planned to take place in mid March 2004’ and: ‘Knowing the individuals as well as I do, this timeline is very realistic and will provide for ample time to plan, mobilise, equip and deploy the force.’

  Enter the German

  The cast of the Wonga Coup is so heavily stocked with rogues and eccentrics there seems little room for more. But one character deserves attention. Gerhard Eugen Merz managed an airline called Central Asian Logistics GmbH. A middleaged German from Frankfurt, he had spent some of his youth in Israel, then had moved back to Germany. By the early 1990s the American government had identified him as a dangerous individual. In 1994 President Bill Clinton signed an executive order saying Merz and two others had promoted ‘proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons’. The Americans said he had arranged sales of materials from China to Iran, between 1991 and 1993, for use in making chemical weapons. With two accomplices and various companies he was blacklisted. Americans were barred from doing business with him.

  Such people often retreat to remote corners like Equatorial Guinea. Merz and du Toit grew to know each other and Merz helped supply planes and air crew for du Toit’s aviation company, PANAC. Central Asian Logistics provided an Antonov and an Ilyushin 76. Merz also contracted an Armenian flight crew through a firm called Tiga-Eiri. Du Toit later recalled: ‘These agreements were brokered by Mr Gerhard Merz on my behalf sometime in December 2003. The two aircraft were brought to Malabo on the 8 and 10 January 2004 respectively.’ On 12 February Mann, through his Logo Logistics, paid Merz’s air company nearly $125,000. Investigators later concluded that Merz had joined the plotters as their ‘transportation officer’. He would pay a heavy price.

  One oil executive recalls bumping into du Toit’s group, including Merz, at Nautica, one of Malabo’s few restaurants. Nautica is in a picturesque spot by the harbour, near the presidential palace. On the evening of 19 January the oil worker dined near a table of thirty-five drunken expatriates who roared in Afrikaans. Asked why they were in Malabo, the foreigners gave differing answers. One said they were pilots hired by the government, another said he was setting up a fishing business. A third, an Angolan, looked scared and would not talk. A fourth said they were ‘working on a very big project, and that the boss would be here’. Then du Toit walked in, a tall and striking figure, who promptly joined the boisterous crowd.

  Later the executive bumped into a smaller group of the same men at a hotel, and was invited by Merz to join them for a drink. ‘Merz was the most friendly of them all,’ recalls the executive. ‘He had a big beard, a smallish face, he was hefty but not hugely overweight.’ The men were obviously in the middle of a meeting, but paused to hand out their business cards. Malabo is a small place, and the identity of outsiders is soon known to all. But they were making it laughably easy for strangers – this executive happened to be close to the presidents of both Equatorial Guinea and South Africa – to gather information on them.

  Du Toit was busy. He shuttled to South Africa for frequent meetings with Mann. It was in January, he said, that he first heard about ‘Ely’ the Lebanese. Around the same time Mann dropped the idea of snatching Obiang at Malabo airport, so needed a new plan. One was for a team of soldiers to be deployed to Annobon island, a remote speck of land in the Atlantic, as a base for launching a raid on Malabo. But Annobon is tiny and its runway is inadequate for longrange planes. And there were two outstanding practical concerns, aside from the ever-tiresome funding, of guns and soldiers. The need for weapons was to grow acute in February, and will be discussed in a later chapter. But what of the footsoldiers?

  Mercenaries are most easily recruited from the ranks of men who have recently left regular armies. Mann and the others knew where to recruit officers and men. Johann Smith says a battalion of fighters can be raised in South Africa with a few phone calls. Early in 2004 a plentiful supply of soldiers existed, especially among black veterans who were not in demand in Iraq. Mann wanted to draw on the 32 Battalion and special forces men who had earlier fought for Executive Outcomes. Some had also worked in Morgan’s non-military operation at mines in Congo. Morgan says at least six of these went on to be part of the Wonga Coup.

  The first round of recruitment happened late in 2003. Now more soldiers were needed. Smith was right that seventy-five men were sought. Mann later told investigators he also hoped a local force might turn on Obiang. If not, his group would have been sufficient anyway:

  Nick du Toit started to put a team of seventy-five men together. This team was to stay in present employment and was to hold itself ready. Nick du Toit and I judged that seventy-five men was the minimum number to safely escort Severo Moto when he returned and should things not go to plan and should the mutiny/uprising not take place.

  In an effort to cover their tracks, a false paper trail was made. On 14 January, Mann’s company, Logo Logistics, signed a contract with du Toit’s aviation firm, PANAC, to provide seventy-five expatriate security guards to Equatorial Guinea. Logo would supposedly earn $525,000 a month and the guards would arrive in February. The document, signed by Mann and du Toit, was to show to anyone who grew suspicious about their collaboration over Equatorial Guinea. Mann passed a bundle of such documents to Morgan early in 2004, hoping – but failing – to allay his suspicions.

  On 18 January at a meeting in South Africa Mann told du Toit to complete recruitment. He acted quickly. Du Toit later told interrogators: ‘I started asking around for people to be used on a security job … Within five days I had approximately fifty-five people available. Included in this group were also the white members … who would lead the teams. I handed all the details over to James Kershaw, who was to administer the group from then on …’ Eventually du Toit’s efforts were put on a more formal footing. On 12 February Mann (through Logo) and du Toit (through his Military Technical Services) signed a deal setting the men’s wages. It is yet another piece of a heavily strewn – if rather confusing – paper trail. This time du Toit’s firm was to supply ‘trained and competent professionals’ for ‘projects in the fields of security and logistics’. Du Toit would get 3 per cent of all the salaries paid, or a minimum of $5,000 a month.

  Naturally du Toit sought men who could re
cruit others. He asked Neves Tomas Matias, a former special forces soldier of Angolan origin, to help find Buffalo Soldiers who wanted work. One of the accused, Harry Carlse (Jacob Hermanus Albertus Carlse), admitted he also helped recruit the team leaders for the operation. He said Neves pulled in some sixty footsoldiers, offering them a salary of $1,500 a month each. Team leaders would each get $5,000, he said. But a copy of a payroll document, with the names and bank account details of most of those hired for the coup, suggests each footsoldier was promised an upfront payment worth double that. Others sources give different figures. Whatever the exact amount, it tempted ex-soldiers who otherwise earned pitiful wages. Kashama Mazanga, a veteran, recalls: ‘When you get another job offering a bit more money … you have to accept it.’ Mazanga was trained as a special forces soldier and had worked for Executive Outcomes as a translator.

  Another footsoldier, who has asked not to be identified, was hired early in 2004. ‘My cousin was involved, that is how I was recruited. If he had known about any coup plot he would never have got me involved … In February my cousin said they were recruiting for DRC, to work at a mine. We were to meet at a McDonald’s in Pretoria. Then we were taken to the 224 hotel, where we met the first white guys: Loutjkie Horn [another plot leader] and Carlse. They said, “We need security guards in Congo and will pay $6,000 a month.” The wage seemed high. ‘But it was a bit risky in eastern Congo. I asked around, so it all made sense to me. Companies they pay a lot, so you do not steal the money, or the diamonds. They rather not recruit natives [Congolese] because they steal so much, but then pay more for foreigners.’ He claims nobody mentioned Equatorial Guinea or a coup.