The terrifying tentacles of kidnapping for ransom syndicates have crawled from Mozambique into South Africa over the past few years, with a convicted killer believed to be one of the kingpins pulling the strings from inside a maximum security prison in Maputo.
But Nini Satar, serving a 24-year sentence for the 2000 murder of journalist Carlos Cardosa who investigated massive embezzlement at the Commercial Bank of Mozambique, has denied any involvement in kidnappings in South Africa that have shot up by more than 530% over the past three years.
A TimesLIVE investigation funded by the Henry Nxumalo Foundation has exposed several kidnapping rings operating in South Africa, based on interviews with Mozambican and South African Police Service sources, friends and family of the victims, international police dockets and classified state security documents seen by TimesLIVE reporters.
It tells a tale of kidnapping for ransom starting mainly in Mozambique, targeting super-rich families. According to Mozambican intelligence documents, police believe Satar has, since 2012, from his cell in Maputo’s infamous B.O. maximum security prison, been building his kidnapping empire, one that has forced many of that country’s business elite to flee to South Africa.
The exodus saw Satar, who allegedly recruited foot soldiers from among his fellow inmates, turn his sights to South Africa and its uber-wealthy local and international business community. Among Satar’s alleged “most trusted lieutenants” is Esmail Nangy who is said to have gone as far as undergoing facial reconstruction surgery to avoid being caught, but was nonetheless apprehended at his luxury Centurion home earlier this year.
One of the worst cases linked to this syndicate is that of Mbombela businesswoman Gita Samgi, whose family fled Mozambique after her sister, Poornimah Singh, was kidnapped in Maputo and later released. Samgi, the owner of a forex business, was not as lucky. Her kidnappers sent her family videos of her being burnt with a hot iron, screaming for help. The family paid several ransom amount totalling an estimated R130m but she was still found dead, months after her kidnapping, under an N4 highway bridge near eMalahleni on February 28 2020.
Satar has professed his innocence. His lawyer, Mutola Escova, described claims against him as “social media gossip”.
“My client is not just any person. He doesn`t have to [kidnap for ransom]. Satar is a successful entrepreneur. He owns 40 apartments in Paris. He is a great businessman and this has always caused a lot of envy in society. Satar, in 1996, was accused of having committed a bank fraud of $144m (now about R2.6bn). He ended up confessing to this crime, but that money was never recovered by the bank,” said Escova.
My client is not just any person. He doesn`t have to [kidnap for ransom]. Satar is a successful entrepreneur. He owns 40 apartments in Paris.
As kidnapping for ransom spread in South Africa, local criminals, working in cahoots with corrupt police officers, spotted this as a new opportunity and started copycat kidnappings. The Western Cape police have recently had some success in clamping down on their crooked colleagues, with five officers nabbed.
Other gangs caught on. Tariq “Baba” Tahir, believed to be the head of a crime cartel known as Lajpal, with its roots in Pakistan, has been operating freely in South Africa despite being declared a prohibited person nine years ago.
Driving around in a convoy of black SUVs and surrounded by heavily armed bodyguards, sometimes

attending late-night meetings outside petrol stations, Tahir has been arrested and appeared in court in connection with at least five kidnappings for ransom. He managed to walk free every time.
Despite his prohibition and numerous department of home affairs (DHA) rejections of his visa appeals, Tahir secured his latest spousal visa on May 31 2022. He can remain here until May 30 2024. Applicants for such visas are only eligible to receive one if they have not been prohibited.
Tahir’s latest visa acquisition is now the subject of a Hawks investigation, with detectives looking into how Lajpal infiltrated the DHA. Home affairs spokesperson Siya Qoza told TimesLIVE Tahir was “a person of interest whose status is irregular”. He said the questions from TimesLIVE exposed a “web” that pointed to a “manipulation of our systems by some officials”.
“The counter corruption branch is following leads to get to the bottom of this. The department will revoke his status,” said Qoza.
Tahir referred requests for comment to his lawyer, Riaan Louw, who said he had not received instructions from his client and therefore could not comment.
Tahir is believed to have worked himself up as cartel leader after its previous commanders died from poisoned food at a meeting in Clocolan in the Free State in 2007. Tahir, who was supposed to have been at the same meeting but never showed up, was allegedly a mid-level member of Lajpal at the time. He was never charged for the killings but four other Lajpal members were convicted in 2013 after the bodies were discovered buried in the garden of a Clocolan house in 2008.
The deaths, say police sources, cleared the way for new blood to transform the group into what it is today �` a global human trafficking and ransom kidnapping cartel that instils fear in South Africa’s émigré Pakistani community.
Also living in fear are business owners in the Eastern Cape where there have been nearly 150 kidnappings for ransom over the past year, with six people reportedly murdered. Driving the surge are extortion racketeers who, working with police, threaten business owners with kidnapping unless they pay protection fees.
A police source with knowledge of the national Hawks team’s investigation said those kidnapped were targeted because they refused to pay protection money. “The extortionists and kidnappers are the same. Last year protection fees hovered around R250,000. This year they rose to R500,000 per business. The syndicates are making a killing.”
In Cape Town, a new trend known as “express kidnappings” is emerging. These consist of a kidnapping with a quick turnaround time. Demands mostly start at more than R1m, but are often settled at between R5,000 and R200,000.
Police said kidnapping is increasingly being used to force victims to pay over inheritances or lump-sum pension payouts. Criminals operating in townships from Cape Town to the Eastern Cape appear to be gathering information on those in their communities who may have received such payments.
According to official police statistics in the 2019/2020 reporting year, 77 kidnapping cases in which ransoms were demanded were recorded by the police. In the 2022/2023 year, this number had swelled to 409, representing an increase of 531% over three years. V.4957

The Department of Home Affairs is going through a torrid time. As The South African reported earlier this year, naturalised South Africans are being refused smart ID cards. This is despite having the same constitutional rights as every other South African citizen. Now, Home Affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi has decided to clarify the reasons behind lengthy delays for spousal visas.Business Tech reports that some spousal (and relatives) visas are taking up to two years to process. The minister of Home Affairs says this is because documentation and claims need to be verified. Replying to a parliamentary Q&A session, the minister says the issue is being addressed by the Home Affairs ‘Backlog Eradication Plan’. V.5305
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Border Management Authority SA commissioner Mike Masiapato on Sunday revealed that over a 10-day period during Easter nearly 4,000 people were intercepted attempting to enter the country illegally.Addressing a media briefing, Masiapato said 2,403 of those intercepted did not have any documents at all. Another 1,019 individuals were refused entry for being undesirable and 419 were found inadmissible to enter the country due to various reasons.“The majority of those arrested without documents were intercepted at the vulnerable segments of the borderline. They were processed, declared undesirable for five years, and were deported. Most of the inadmissible individuals were found with invalid passports, fraudulent visas or just failed to produce relevant documents such as valid yellow fever certificates, especially those travelling from yellow fever endemic countries,” Masiapato said. V.5303
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Home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi says surveillance drones, speedboats and hand-held biometric devices have been ordered to help manage the country`s porous borders. South Africa`s land borders cover about 4,700km. Insufficient security and the poor state of fencing make the borders insecure, with foreigners entering illegally and allowing other acts of criminality. V.5304
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Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has blamed visa backlogs on the growth in the number of notarial contracts being instituted by foreign nationals using non-existent spouses. Motsoaledi was speaking at a media briefing in Pretoria, on Tuesday on the amended immigration regulations, over which he said there seemed to be some misunderstanding. He said as a result of the confusion, the department would be withdrawing the gazetted amendments to clear up the misconceptions and would re-gazette them as early as next week. The minister admitted that his department was experiencing a backlog surrounding dependants, spouses and relatives’ visas being sought by foreign nationals who had been approved to come into the country after successfully obtaining employment. He said in most cases while the approvals were easily obtained, they did not include spouses and dependants, which many were decrying as they were not willing to be separated from their families. V.5298
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Home Affairs Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, has moved to clarify a misunderstanding on the gazetted regulations recommendations on the Critical Skills and General Work Visas. This comes after some media reports had stated that the department had done away with the Critical Skills Visa in favour of a point-based system. Briefing the media on the Second Amendment of the Immigration Regulation 2014 on Tuesday, Motsoaledi pointed out that section 19(4) of the Immigration Act states that a Critical Skills Work Visa may be issued by the Director-General to an individual possessing such skills or qualifications determined to be critical for the Republic from time to time by the Minister by notice in the gazette. V.5299
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The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) has backtracked on its new Immigration Regulations but still has several new initiatives in the pipeline for South Africa. Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi said that he would withdraw the recently gazetted Immigration Regulation Amendments. The regulations replaced the highly-contested critical skills list with a new points-based system. The regulations were received positively by businesses in South Africa, with the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa saying that they should ease the administrative burden that international companies with businesses in South Africa face when hiring skilled foreigners. V.5300
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The Department of Home Affairs says it has lost close to 38 000 working hours over the past five financial years due to the impact of load shedding. The Eastern Cape has the highest amount of working hours lost at more than 7 900. Mpumalanga lost 5 990 hours, while Gauteng lost 4 621 working hours. This was revealed by the Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, replying to a Democratic Alliance (DA) parliamentary question on the total hours lost in each province due to load shedding. DA MP, Christopher Roos, who posed the question, says this is an alarming number of working hours lost, and is a concern for service delivery. V.5301
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Industry injected an estimated R1.2bn into the Western Cape economy in the last financial year, with around 90 000 passengers and 38 000 crew members expected to step ashore in the current year. For the first time in history, Friday (11 April) saw two of the world’s most famous cruise liners the Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Victoria dock in the Port of Cape Town at the same time. V.5302
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In the past, prior to the amendments to the Immigration Act, it was possible for an illegal foreigner to “legalise” or “regularise” him/herself from within South Africa by making payment of the requisite fine. This is no longer the case and we are constantly encountering foreigners who find themselves illegally in South Africa with little hope of rectifying their situation. The current dilemma In many cases, these illegal foreigners elect to depart South Africa and contest any ban issued to them from outside of the country. This involves the submission of an overstay appeal to the Department of Home Affairs (“DHA”). A number of foreigners, however, simply have too much invested in South Africa and are unwilling to depart the country for fear of incurring a ban that may or may not be overturned. V.5294
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By its own admission, the department loses most of its court cases- the costs of which are borne by the taxpayer. Dzmitry Dzenisiuk was deployed to SA in 2014, with his wife joining him under a spousal visa. Both applied for visa extensions in February 2021. Image: Moneyweb The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) has been blocked by the Pretoria High Court from deporting a foreign worker and his wife, both of whom had been refused visa extensions, based on its failure to properly consider the documents supplied in their visa applications. This is the latest in a string of court losses notched up by Home Affairs. In the latest ruling, the high court ruled that the decision not to renew the visa of two foreign nationals must be set aside and returned to Home Affairs for reconsideration. V.5295
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