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Pauw argues that under Tom Moyane, SARS was deliberately stripped of its investigative capacity. Units that pursued high-net-worth individuals, organised crime and the illicit tobacco trade were disbanded, and experienced investigators were pushed out. Disabling enforcement protected people linked to the president, including figures in the tobacco trade, without ever having to formally clear them.
Newspapers published allegations that SARS ran a 'rogue unit' that spied illegally. Pauw says these claims were planted and later discredited, but by then they had already done their work. The manufactured scandal served as the pretext to suspend or remove officials such as Ivan Pillay, Johann van Loggerenberg and later to target Pravin Gordhan, so honest officials were painted as the wrongdoers while the actual capture went ahead.
Pauw details the State Security Agency's Principal Agent Network programme under Arthur Fraser. Large sums were allegedly spent on agents who did not exist or did nothing, along with safe houses, vehicles and cash with no verifiable intelligence product. The findings were buried rather than prosecuted, and Fraser was later promoted to head the agency, showing how secret budgets blind oversight and reward the people who abuse them.
In Pauw's account, a compromised leader stays out of prison because allies are placed across several gatekeeping institutions, not because one institution fails. These include: - prosecutors who decline cases - police crime intelligence that is protected or redirected - spies who watch and pressure opponents - tax officials who stop looking The right thing to track is who gets appointed to each chokepoint and who gets removed from it, because the pattern shows up in personnel moves before it shows up in verdicts.
Pauw alleges that during his first years as president, Zuma received a monthly payment of about R1 million from a private security company linked to a businessman associate. According to Pauw, Zuma did not file tax returns for years and the income went undeclared.