Rogue: The Inside Story of SARS’s Elite Crime-busting Unit

A brave civil servant blows the whistle

THE STORY OF A SARS 'ROGUE UNIT' became entrenched in the public mind following a succession of sensational reports of illegal spook operations published by the Sunday Times. The unit, the reports claimed, had spied on President Jacob Zuma, run a brothel and entered into illegal tax settlements.

In a plot of Machiavellian proportions, Johann van Loggerenberg, who headed the elite crime-busting unit, and nearly the entire top management were forced to quit SARS. Van Loggerenberg's select team of investigators, with an impeccable track record of busting high-level financial fraudsters and nailing tax criminals, lost their careers and their reputations.

Now, in this extraordinary account, they finally get to put the record straight. There was no 'rogue unit'. The public had been deceived, seemingly by powers conspiring to captures SARS for their own ends. Shooting down the allegations he faced one by one, van Loggerenberg tells the story of what really happened inside SARS and shares details of some of the unit's real investigations.