Dawood Khan and Wardah Latief are both related to one of South Africa’s most notorious alleged money launderers known as Mo Dollars.

Mo Dollars, whose real name is Mohamed Khan, was implicated in funnelling the proceeds of illicit cigarette sales in South Africa to Dubai in a documentary by Al Jazeera.

One of the companies Mo Dollars worked for was South African cigarette manufacturer Gold Leaf Tobacco. Mo Dollars and Gold Leaf have denied all wrongdoing.

In the documentary series, Mo’s brother, Dawood, detailed his direct involvement in his brother’s alleged money laundering schemes for over six years. Wardah, who was married to Mo for 19 years, revealed how she used to collect the boxes of cash that her husband allegedly laundered.

Both decided to blow the whistle on what they allege was Mo’s elaborate laundromat for dirty money, and are now living in hiding, in fear for their lives.

In interviews illustrated with supporting documents broadcast by Al Jazeera earlier this year, Dawood Khan described how he was tasked to do illicit transfers by creating a fake paper trail to make sham transactions appear legitimate. This included forging documents for fictitious tobacco sales to justify large transfers to Dubai, where it was allegedly used to buy gold from Zimbabwe.

To ensure these payments went through the South African banking system without any trouble, a network of bank officials were allegedly bribed. Most were from a small commercial lender, Sasfin Bank. Dawood dealt with these officials directly, and managed company correspondence with them. Their alleged bribes were recorded as recurring payments in company expense ledgers that Dawood provided and were screened in the Al Jazeera series.

Dawood said an official who worked in the bank’s IT division was subsequently bribed to wipe all records of the fraudulent transactions from the mainframe computer so that the illicit transfers remained hidden from South Africa’s central bank. Dawood would then reconstruct the bank statements, with the fraudulent sham transactions scrubbed out.

Dawood’s decision to go public with his disclosures about his brother’s alleged money laundering operation has come at a great cost. He said he survived two assassination attempts last year. Now he lives in a safe house in an undisclosed location. He believes he will never see his family again, including his elderly mother, who could pass away any day without his knowledge.

He points out that the people he exposed have connections at the highest levels of the governments of South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Zimbabwe.

“These are individuals that have the capabilities of governments and their security services to be able to trace people, to look for individuals, find them and take them out,” he told Al Jazeera. “It’s not only myself that’s in danger from speaking out. It’s going to be my entire family for their entire lifetime.”

Wardah Latief provided Al Jazeera with valuable first-hand information about how Mo Dollars allegedly paid off officials to control the foreign exchange division of Sasfin Bank in South Africa to ensure that illicit transactions went through undetected. She described taking part in bribery herself, together with her husband. “Our lives were just bribing everybody around us,” she told Al Jazeera. “He goes: ‘Bribe whoever you need to put out the fire. Money puts out fires.’”

Wardah described how she and her husband had lived regular lives for about six years years before he became involved in alleged money laundering. The first sign that something was amiss was when he arrived home with a large amount of cash he couldn’t account for. This soon turned into a daily occurrence. As the years went by, the amounts increased exponentially. He started splashing out on sports cars, luxury goods, and high-end travel.

In the Al Jazeera series, Wardah disclosed how her husband later tasked her to collect large boxes of cash that were the proceeds of illicit tobacco sales. “I used to do the money run, because he couldn’t trust anybody to pick up the money. The money came from the cigarette guys.” She described regularly collecting large sums of cash in parking lot meetings.

Wardah initially enjoyed the opulent lifestyle Mo provided, which included staying at the most expensive hotels and splashing out on gold and diamond jewellery and luxury goods on numerous trips to Dubai. All payments were done in cash.

Eventually she could no longer stand “living the gangster lifestyle”, as she called it. The day she left him, there was more than US$1 million in cash stashed in suitcases in their home.

Gold Leaf Tobacco denied any involvement in money laundering or illicit cigarette sales. Mo Dollars told Al Jazeera that all the allegations made against him were false. He said they were based on speculation, conjecture and manufactured and doctored evidence. He denied any involvement in money laundering or bribing any South African banking officials.

The disclosures by Dawood Khan and Wardah Latief have led to a crackdown on Mo Dollars’ allegedly illicit activities. After the Al Jazeera series was screened, South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, announced the authorities had launched an investigation into the money laundering allegations the series detailed.

Sasfin announced it had fired all implicated employees, severed ties with implicated clients, and opened criminal cases against 11 former employees. The bank also revealed it could face regulatory sanctions from South Africa’s central bank. The country’s financial regulator, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, has also revoked the operating licence of a Mo Dollar company accused of money laundering.

Photo credits: Al-Jazeera (Dawood Khan), Alexander James (Wardah Latief)