gone beyond their mandate and pocketed profits from the operation. The NIA handler and his unit would later be suspended based on allegations of fraud, misuse of state resources and death threats. NIA was also involved with the vetting of members of parliament's joint standing committee on intelligence, who would then appoint the Inspector-General of Intelligence. The Democratic Partys nominee was rejected, having been an old member of the ANC and its intelligence operations prior to 1994 though it was claimed that this not the reason for his rejection. In early 2000, NIA was accused by Pagad's leader, Abdus Salaam Ebrahim, of being involved in a bombing at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in the previous years and the murders and attempted murder of its members. Pagad had led a vigilante campaign against crime and drugs in the Western Cape since 1995. The police dismissed the allegations as false but it appeared that the NIA had infiltrated the organisation. During April 2000, the NIA and SASS became embroiled in an international fraud that had been initiated by a now former member of the NIA whom had used a series of apartheid-era front companies, created before 1994. The scam, having been discovered, resulted in a group American investors successfully suing the South African government in an American court for $14 million (R94 million). The front companies had been set up in the late 80s by a number of former apartheid South African intelligence officials including Eugene de Kock. The Scorpions had failed to act on intelligence supplied when in September 2000, the NIA had provide information that Pagad was planning to assassinate a judicial official. Later that month, Cape Town magistrate, Pieter Theron was assassinated outside his house. At the end of 2004, Mavimbela's appointment ended and he left the public sector for the private sector joining Mvelaphanda Holdings and the Mvelaphanda Group, responsible for business strategy development. Billy Masetlha Billy Masetlha was suspended on 22 October 2005 because of allegations that he had conducted illegal intelligence operation against an ANC official and businessman Saki Macozoma, a Mbeki supporter, a potential alternative candidate for president. It appeared that a succession battle for the presidency was occurring within the ANC between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, with high-ranking civil servants involved. Saki Macozoma had complained to Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils that he was under NIA surveillance, an operation that Kasrils was not