KAS Enterprises

David Stirling founded the security company KAS Enterprises in 1986, appointing Ian Crooke as managing director.

Project Lock

In 1987 Stirling and Crooke approached Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Dr John Hanks of the World Wildlife Fund about an anti-poaching project in Africa. After an intelligence-gathering phase in 1988, the active phase of the project got underway in 1989.

Dr Hanks told the Independent in 1991 that he had put a proposal to Prince Bernhard in 1987:

Dr Hanks pointed out to Prince Bernhard that while millions of pounds were spent protecting rhino, little was done to halt the horn traffic. According to Dr Hanks, Prince Bernhard said it would be an extremely dangerous and sensitive subject, and made it clear that it would not only be contrary to WWF policy to fund such work directly but also that it would be undesirable for it to be seen as being even remotely connected with such activities.

Prince Bernhard agreed to fund the operation in a private capacity and on the strict condition that the WWF should not be involved or even told about it. But according to documents obtained by The Independent, the WWF Director-General, Charles de Haes, knew from the start about Dr Hanks' plans to investigate the trade.

Exactly who came up with original idea is not clear. According to the Independent, Hanks commissioned KAS Enterprises, whose chairman David Stirling claimed to have been thinking on similar lines:

He claimed that, in company with some friends in Britain, he had conceived a dual strategy for Southern Africa. One was a project to conserve wildlife, and the second a plan to persuade South Africa's white rulers that they could enjoy security under black majority rule. In November 1987, Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Crooke, managing director of KAS Enterprises Ltd and a former officer in the SAS, submitted his preliminary proposals to John Hanks of WWF. Dr Hanks forwarded these to Prince Bernhard, who paid the first instalment of an eventual pounds 500,000.

Although the initial aim was to gather intelligence, it developed into a more ambitious project to employ former SAS men for paramilitary anti-poaching work throughout Southern Africa and purchased equipment from the South African Defence Force. At least pounds 75,000 of Prince Bernhard's donation was used for the purchase of rhino horn.

Ian Crooke and a team of a dozen ex-SAS members established themselves in South Africa, where they organized a safe house and set up computer database containing their accumulated intelligence. It was then that their problems really began. The team established cordial relations with various South African agencies based on mutual self-help, which immediately made them suspect to Black Africans.

According to the Independent, weapons for the project were purchased from the South African Defence Force, whose own personnel were themselves implicated in the ivory trade. It's South African links undermined attempts to work elsewhere in Africa.

KAS also tried to persuade officials in several other African countries to pass on information concerning the horn trade to the project and to employ KAS to train game wardens. But it appears officials in most of these countries were suspicious of the project because of its South African connections and turned down the offer. KAS is known to have approached conservation officials in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Tanzania and Kenya. Nevertheless, KAS succeeded in working with Zimbabwean game warders and funding a helicopter for anti-poaching operations in the Zambezi Valley.

In Namibia, KAS trained an anti- poaching team in mid-1989, when South African forces were being demobilised prior to independence elections. The trainees almost certainly included members of Koevoet (Crowbar), the South African counter-insurgency unit. KAS also trained game wardens for Mozambique inside South Africa.

Although Operation Lock itself is now defunct, the paramilitary training of game wardens is continuing in South African tribal homelands. Some youths have complained that after being recruited as nature conservation officers, they have in fact been trained as soldiers at secret military sites.

...In July 1989 the whole operation was blown wide open, allegedly as a result of Ian Crooke's indiscretion. A local Reuters correspondent issued a report which insinuated that Project Lock was an undercover operation designed to designed to destabilise certain Black African states , funded by South Africa and using as operatives ex-SAS mercenaries.

The Independent reported that Prince Bernhard and Dr Hanks withdrew from the project in 1989 and that KAS ceased trading in 1990, having failed to account for its funding, equipment or the Rhino horn it had purchased.

National Car Parks

The head of National Car Parks hired KAS Enterprises to engage in industrial espionage against rival Europarks UK, it was claimed in a 1993 court case.

Material was rifled from directors' dustbins, ex-SAS men gained undercover jobs in Europark's car parks and former army captain Jane Turpin was given a fake cv to get a secretary's job, the jury was told.

Mr David Paget, prosecuting, said the operation was masterminded by Gordon Layton, 56, deputy chairman and chief executive of NCP, Britain's biggest car park company. He allegedly paid KAS Enterprises, a security firm, to infiltrate Europarks.

The jury heard the operation was initially carried out by Colonel Ian Crook, another former SAS man, who could not be prosecuted because he is now living in South Africa.

In the dock with Layton is Simon Hewitt, who took over the day-to-day running of KAS when Crook left.

Demise

Anthony Kemp states that KAS was wound up in February 1991, three months' after Stirling's death. However, the Guardian reported in 1997, that the company was taken over by Sir James Goldsmith after Stirling's death.

People

• David Stirling
• Ian Crooke
• Simon Hewitt
• Simon Mann
• Jane Turpin