A frequent target of Gleason’s was NPA head Bulelani Ngcuka

DAVID Gleason, who has died in Johannesburg at the age of 72, was a controversial financial journalist who wrote a regular column in Business Day ­ a column that became a mouthpiece for the greatest corporate crook of our time.

Gleason’s credibility suffered a devastating blow when it emerged that he had been receiving payments from bogus mining magnate Brett Kebble while using his column to give him positive publicity and attack his enemies.

A frequent target of Gleason’s was Bulelani Ngcuka, who was then-head of the National Prosecuting Authority and the Scorpions, which were investigating Kebble and his father, Roger. Kebble used Gleason to discredit Ngcuka whenever possible.

As well as being on Kebble’s payroll, Gleason drove a luxury BMW from the Kebble fleet. Kebble gave him about R10-million to run a failing and unprofitable financial magazine, Finance Week, which he sold after about a year.

He got Gleason to try to persuade one of his most persistent media critics, journalist Barry Sergeant, to start a publication, which Kebble would fund, in opposition to the investigative magazine Noseweek, which had published several highly damaging pieces about Kebble’s fraudulent activities and close ties to the ANC.

When Kebble was killed ­ Gleason believed it was an assassination and not the assisted suicide that his killers, who were let off, insisted on ­ Gleason helped to carry his coffin, read out Roger Kebble’s eulogy and castigated Kebble’s media critics. Kebble, said Gleason, had been “a target of abuse at the hands of the press who used every opportunity to vilify him and still do”.

Gleason also used his column to suggest that the trial of Jacob Zuma’s “financial adviser”, Schabir Shaik, was a politically motivated sham designed to scupper the chances of Zuma ­ a Kebble ally ­ becoming president.

“Zuma has been charged and found guilty without ever having been inside a courtroom,” he wrote, adding that he was “mystified” by Judge Hilary Squires’s “egregious phrase” that “a generally corrupt relationship existed” between Zuma and Shaik. “I do not know what that means ­ and I doubt that it carries any legal validity whatever,” Gleason wrote.

He questioned Squires’s motives and background.

Gleason was sued by Kebble’s insolvent estate for money he received after Kebble became bankrupt ­ 22 payments of R50 000 and upwards between 2003 and 2005 ­ and reached a settlement after appearing in court.

After repeatedly warning Gleason to lay off politics and stick to the original agreement that he would write a business column, Business Day editor Peter Bruce, who did not yet know that Gleason was being paid by Kebble, fired him in 2005, several months before Kebble’s death.

Gleason did not take kindly to this and there was a frosty silence between them for several years until Bruce invited him to resume his “Torque” column, which appeared four days a week. Although Gleason relied heavily for his material on well-placed informants ­ “wandering albatrosses”, as he called them ­ it was still an astonishing performance. He never missed a deadline and, although he was sued a few times, only once did Business Day have to publish a retraction.

Gleason was born in Zambia on October 21 1941. His father was a coal miner. After matriculating at St Andrew’s in Grahamstown, he joined Anglo American. He ran agricultural and industrial projects for the corporation in Zambia, was future Anglo boss Gavin Relly’s personal assistant, a manager at Vaal Reefs gold mine in Klerksdorp and a divisional manager in its gold division.

Between 1982 and 1992 he worked as a mining analyst, stockbroker, banker and coal mine director. In 1992, he became a journalist on the Financial Mail.

He started Gleason Publications, which published DealMakers, a niche publication about corporate finance activity, and the corporate law magazine Without Prejudice.

Gleason, who died after having a heart attack at the gym, was married for 16 years before he and his wife, June, were divorced. She died in 2001. He has no children.

With acknowledgement to Chris Barron and Sunday Times.

This one was a real stinker.

Business Day is a great newspaper, but like this arms deal stinker it also employed Stephen Laufer - all embedded journalists - often in the cause of the Arms Deal

Where does Peter Bruce find these odoriferous beauties?

Another embedded journalist is Helmoed-Romer Heitman.

RIP