The National Intelligence Agency has instructed presidential staff to keep away from a man who, they say, has for five years masqueraded as a secret agent reporting directly to the President.

Intelligence and presidential officials believe the man, who uses the name Bheki Jacobs, to be the author of several documents alleging corruption in the R43-billion arms deal.

Some of the documents have been passed on to Patricia de Lille, the Pan Africanist Congress MP, and Judge Willem Heath, the former corruption-buster.

Since 1996 Jacobs has been supplying "intelligence" documents to officials in Thabo Mbeki's office, claiming he secretly works for the President. He has also sought information from them.

Jacobs has been associated with the Minister in the Presidency, Essop Pahad, former Intelligence Minister Joe Nhlanhla, Mbeki's international affairs adviser, Thembi Majola, former spokesman Thami Ntenteni and Mbeki's former political adviser, Vusi Mavimbela.

Top officials trusted Jacobs and took his information seriously but it is not clear how they used it.

Majola said presidential staff had been warned by National Intelligence to avoid contact with him.

Among the bizarre documents Jacobs sent to the presidency are:

A report titled Business Front alleging that the mining and industrial conglomerate Anglo American and the diamond giant De Beers had teamed up with Johnnic chairman Cyril Ramaphosa in a plot to overthrow Mbeki. Other people alleged to be involved in the plot include Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Valli Moosa and former Gauteng Premier Tokyo Sexwale;
A report on the South African Communist Party alleging that there were three subgroups - "a white left / Jewish cabal", an "Indian left cabal" and an "African left" clique - building an "anti-Mbeki front";
A Western Cape ANC alliance plot against Mbeki
illicit affair with a nurse from the Eastern Cape and that they now have a daughter who now lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

Jacobs confirmed yesterday that he had sent the documents to the Presidency but said they were "private correspondence between me and the President".

Jacobs has been employed as a consultant at the Africa Institute of South Africa since August 1999.

Jacobs said he runs an independent company, Congress Consultants, which, according to its written profile, "has over 800 people to deliver services" including investigations, political, security and threat analyses, and demobilisation of former combatants.

Jacobs, who was an ANC intelligence operative in exile, spent time in Lusaka and Moscow and returned to South Africa in 1994.

Pahad said Jacobs had visited the Union Buildings several times and "produced a lot of documents with intelligence information".

"Eventually I sent him to NIA [the National Intelligence Agency] . . . I told him not to come to me or the offices any more," Pahad said.

Majola said she met Jacobs last year, after which he sought meetings to discuss anti-Mbeki information that he had uncovered.

He later dropped off documents containing "malicious gossip" about Mbeki, assessments of the situation in Africa and a copy of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's infamous letter to Deputy President Jacob Zuma, before it became public.

De Lille yesterday refused to be drawn on questions about the identity of her sources, saying: "I will protect my sources with my life."

Jacobs, who says his real name is Uranian Solomons, also goes by other aliases, including Vladimir Illich Solomons, Hassan Solomons and "King" Solomon Solomons.

He said: "Whoever is sending the stuff out is undermining the Presidency and the President himself. I think this is just harassment, a campaign against me."

With acknowledgements to Ranjeni Munusami and the Sunday Times.