DA chief whip John Steenhuisen on Tuesday said the party had laid corruption charges against State Security Agency (SSA) director-general Arthur Fraser and his family after a book by Jacques Pauw implicated the chief spook in the running of a parallel intelligence network.
Pauw, an investigative journalist, published his book "The President's Keepers" recently and it implicated Fraser in the running of the sideline network during a previous stint at the spy agency before 2010.
The allegations relate to the period 2007 to 2009 when Fraser, who was deputy DG: operations of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), initiated and oversaw the dubious Principle Agent Network (PAN) programme.
An internal investigation into the PAN programme reportedly found wide-scale financial mismanagement, fruitless expenditure, nepotism and corruption.
It also found sufficient evidence to institute criminal investigations against a number of people involved with the programme, including Fraser.
According to the statement, the involvement of Fraser's family included, among others, his brother, Barry Fraser, whose company concluded a R24-million lease agreement to warehouse an estimated 293 vehicles, purchased for "operational use"; his son, Lyle Fraser; and his mother, C.F. Fraser, who served as a board member of a community-based organisation dealing with conflict resolution, especially at schools.