Angelo Agrizzi claims Gavin Watson tried to ‘buy his silence’ with R50m

State capture commission whistleblower and former Bosasa chief operating officer (COO) Angelo Agrizzi has alleged that his former boss at facilities management company Bosasa, its chief executive Gavin Watson, tried to buy his silence in August 2018, which he eventually refused to accede to.

Although the “negotiations” reached the point of an eight-page contract overseen by lawyers on both sides, it was ultimately never signed and entered into. There was even to be an “oversight committee” consisting of Ronnie Watson, Valence Watson and Bosasa lawyer Brian Biebuyck, who would “manage the relationship” between the men in an attempt to prevent Agrizzi from making any more damaging disclosures about Bosasa.

A family member close to the negotiations, however, Watson’s nephew Jared, has dismissed Agrizzi’s claim by making the counterclaim that Agrizzi was the one who came up with the whole proposal and new contract, and that it ultimately wasn’t signed because Watson’s daughter Lindsay questioned the deal and Agrizzi pulled out.

A clearly annoyed Agrizzi countered that, telling The Citizen: “That’s lies. I never initiated it, they flew up to me. Common sense tells everyone they flew up to hound me.”

At the time, Agrizzi was already speaking to the authorities and making public statements about his intention to come clean about the alleged goings-on at Bosasa, a facilities management company that has received billions in contracts from the state over the past decade and more.

The Citizen has seen a draft contract – which Agrizzi describes as the attempt to buy his silence – that was drawn up between Agrizzi and Gavin Watson in which Watson agrees to pay Agrizzi a monthly consultancy fee of R250,000 for five years while also pledging additional millions in funding towards a new company Agrizzi was to head up as executive chairman.

The company, only called “Newco” in the contract, was to be capitalised by Watson to the tune of R10 million in its first year, with each of the four subsequent years to get between R5 million and R10 million from Watson. It all adds up to more than R40 million, at the very least, though it could have been worth as much as R80 million over time.

The contract acknowledges there was a breakdown in trust between Watson and Agrizzi at the time, and it was meant to re-establish the working terms between the two men.

The new agreement was intended to supersede a previous consultancy contract from March 2017 between Bosasa, Consilium Business Consultants, Leading Prospects Trading 11, Agrizzi and Watson “in respect of which various disputes [had] arisen”.

2016, the year of change

Agrizzi explains in his own background that: “In August 2016 I resigned from the Bosasa group of companies after having raised my discontent at the way the Bosasa Group had been managed. As a result of ongoing corruption within the Bosasa group, I realised that this was not a life to live. For 19 years I had been committed to Gavin Watson and had supported him. Gavin Watson continuously compromised people and hurt families in the manner he was conducting his business. People were easily disposed of and I no longer wanted part of this. Lies and daily manipulation had become the order of the day, shrouded under the cloak of religion and political agendas. It was unbearable.”

Agrizzi claims he was being cajoled by numerous individuals involved with Bosasa at the time to “stick together with them”, with one person apparently repeating the warning, “because we will all end up in jail”.

Agrizzi alleges that one of Watson’s brothers actually wanted him to “take the reins of Bosasa [for] the wellbeing of 4,500 employees who were dependent on my return”.

The understanding was to be that Watson would “remedy his old ways”, and “a substantial retainer and a shareholding agreement [for Agrizzi] would be entered into” to allow him to “re-engineer Bosasa”, in his words.

Agrizzi says he had entertained hopes of making the company less dependent on government contracts, although Jared Watson told The Citizen that, in his view, Agrizzi had always intended to take over the company and was intending to do so by creating a reputation crisis at Bosasa.

Jared also repeated allegations that Agrizzi was suspected by some at Bosasa of stealing millions from the company during his time as COO. This echoed a report in the Sunday Times last week referencing a recording from August last year and documents alleged to have been taken from Agrizzi’s work computer as evidence that Agrizzi was plotting to destroy and/or take over Watson’s company after he was fired in 2016 – allegedly for stealing money.

Jared sent the same recordings to The Citizen.

This claim appears to be the foundation of Bosasa’s strategy to discredit Agrizzi’s motives for testifying at the commission.

Agrizzi’s version is that in 2016 he was convinced to withdraw his resignation from the company and was never, in fact, fired. The reason he returned to work that year was that he was “convinced Gavin Watson had resolved to put an end to the old ways I was advocating to stop, [so] I accepted the offer without further negotiations. I was content that Gavin Watson was prepared to change. I withdrew my resignation and returned. Gavin Watson seemed sincere when he tasked me to work with a renowned professor from Wharton in developing a business strategy to re-engineer Bosasa.”

However, he claims that in November 2016 he realised that Watson “was not sincere in what he had promised and I demanded that the shareholding due to me be registered”.

“[Watson] was not happy as he knew that as soon as my shareholding was implemented I would have legal ground to challenge any decision of Gavin Watson.”

Agrizzi then suffered heart problems and was hospitalised on Christmas Day in 2016.

“I had major surgery, was resuscitated and placed on life support. When I came out of the coma, I was shocked to hear that Gavin Watson had attempted to claim life insurance on a key man policy in my name.”

Agrizzi told The Citizen he understood that the policy was valued as high as R45 million.

“I resolved finally to resign from the company once I had recovered fully. I went on a family break to recover. While I was away, I decided to leave the company, albeit I knew I would be sued for the retention contract.”

Upon his return, he explained that he was contacted by Bosasa’s attorney Brian Biebuyck and told that Watson was insisting that he should leave the employ of the company and had cancelled their 10-year agreement.

“I later received a significantly reduced amount in comparison to the settlement value of the original agreement. I was retained on a quasi-consultancy agreement. Gavin Watson did not always adhere to the terms.”

Jared Watson told The Citizen the reason Agrizzi’s settlement payments were sometimes withheld was due to Agrizzi casting aspersions on the company through damaging public statements about Bosasa.

Adds Agrizzi: “I started receiving threats and messages from unknown people saying that if I spoke out that I would be dealt with. I reported the matter to the police in an affidavit.”

Agrizzi later met with the National Prosecuting Authority’s Advocate Willie Hofmeyr, which he said did not result in much due to alleged pressure being placed on Hofmeyr by his seniors. He took advice from Advocate Glynnis Breytenbach in June 2018, who advised him to “see an attorney, which I did”, along with “several others for advice”.

The decision to ‘come clean’, and then the ‘hush contract’

When Agrizzi received “telephonic threats on the evening of the 21st August 2018”, he advised his immediate family that “I have carried this burden long enough and would ensure that this now stopped”.

“I prepared a press statement and, within minutes of its release, I was inundated by calls and messages from Gavin Watson, Brian Biebuyck and various other Watsons wanting to meet with me urgently. I did not take any of their calls.

“Both Ronnie and Valence Watson arrived at my house with Brian Biebuyck and Jared Watson at 21:30 on the 22nd of August 2018. They were extremely apologetic and stated that they knew nothing of what I told them. I briefed them of the actions taken against me. They left at 01:20 on 23rd August 2018.

“Ronnie, Valence and Jared Watson together with Brian Biebuyck met me on the 23rd August 2018 at my house. They said they had confronted Gavin Watson, who denied the allegations raised by me and would do anything to rectify the situation.  They said they had been mandated by Gavin Watson to make offers to me regarding the marketing of Royalston Wildlife Residential Estate, which they would fund. I refused this.

“Knowing they were in fact trying to ensnare myself and a colleague, I said that Brian Biebuyck should draft an agreement, which he agreed to. I was requested to draft the parameters of the offer. In this offer I specified that the signed offer should be sent to myself. The Watsons left my premises at 01:00 on the 24th August 2018, believing I would succumb to an offer.”

He said Gavin’s brother Valence and Valence’s son Jared arrived at 10am the next day and they made certain changes to the offer.

“I even sent it to my attorney to peruse the offer made. The Watsons sat in my office and debated and questioned what went wrong at Bosasa, now African Global Operations, and kept insisting that I sign the offer. It was as if they were trying to tire me out, knowing that I had only slept about four hours in the preceding two days.”

He said Van Tonder, “who was with us on request of the Watsons, was exhausted and said he had to get some sleep”.

When Agrizzi received the next draft agreement on 25 August 2018, it “offered me in excess of R50 million to comply with the Watsons’ request. I responded by saying that I was not happy with the fact that there were no signed suretyships. I was told by Brian Biebuyck in an email that the family would stand surety. I was also told in the email that he wanted my bank account details to deposit a good faith payment of R10 million, but I had to sign the agreement quickly.

“I wasn’t about to sign anything or agree to any payment. This I caucused with Andries Van Tonder and my attorney.

“Knowing the Watsons, and what we were up against, we wanted a signature on the proposed Gavin Watson agreement. However, Brian Biebuyck countered this by saying that it could be signed in counterpart.

“I was not interested in any offer to secure my silence and advised the Watsons and Biebuyck [of that] in writing.”

He says he then received a WhatsApp message, which The Citizen has seen, from Gavin’s daughter Lindsay Watson “to say that she couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t sign, as they were confident that we could resolve the matter”.

“I did not respond to her.”

He says he then started receiving numerous calls on the same day from the Watsons and Biebuyck but did not answer the calls.

“At about 19:30 on the 25th August 2018, after not taking calls from anyone, I received a call from the security on the estate where I live. Roth Watson was on the phone at the gate requesting access to see me with Jared Watson. My wife answered and told Roth I will not be seeing them as I was taking the matter further with [elite police unit] the Hawks. Roth and Jared Watson pleaded to be allowed to see me just for five minutes and that there had been a major misunderstanding. They insistently called for access, to no avail.”

A screenshot of the WhatsApp message that Agrizzi sent Van Tonder that he says was then sent on to Gavin Watson in which Agrizzi says he does not intend to be silenced and has a duty to blow the whistle on the corruption at Bosasa. The WhatsApp also suggests that he intended to use the contract as evidence of how the Watsons tried to ‘cover up corruption’. Supplied by Angelo Agrizzi

When called for comment about the draft contract, Bosasa spokesperson Papa Leshabane said that he had never seen it before and that it was not a document Bosasa as a company knew anything about. He could therefore not comment on it.

“It isn’t even signed,” he pointed out, saying other media had recently shown it to him.

Calls to Gavin Watson rang unanswered. He is understood to have been avoiding the media since Agrizzi’s revelations first implicated him in state capture last week.

Bosasa has sent a memo to staff advising them to inform the company’s lawyers if anyone from the commission contacts them.

Jared Watson, however, summarised what had happened, according to him, as follows: “At no stage did any member or representative of Bosasa ever try procure Angelo’s silence. No proposal was ever accepted by Bosasa or any representative of Bosasa.”

Biebuyck has also reportedly denied that the contract was an attempt to silence Agrizzi.

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