News24 editor-in-chief Adriaan Basson on Tuesday testified at the State capture commission of inquiry on the plethora of threatening phone calls and messages warning him to stop reporting on Bosasa, now known as African Global Operations.

Basson and fellow investigative journalist Carien Du Plessis started unearthing Bosasa's corrupt activities while working for Beeld newspaper in 2006. The investigation continued when they moved to the Mail & Guardian newspaper. In January 2009, the weekly newspaper published an articled headlined: ''Here is the proof, minister'', after the Department of Correctional Services refuted the alleged corruption with Bosasa.

Basson said he received Bosasa emails leaked by a source, showing the extent of the Bosasa corruption.

''The department claimed it was spending a lot of money to fight corruption. I was able to prove that Bosasa was writing tender specification after which they would be awarded the tenders by the department. An expert confirmed veracity of emails, known as beta data,'' he said.

''This was one of what we call smoking gun in journalism...this was a smoking gun. It was evidence on how Bosasa gained the access...and was, perhaps, what we call State capture today.''

Soon after the publication of the article, threatening phone calls were made to Basson. He said one of the phone calls was in February 2009 from a woman who called him while he was on a holiday with his girlfriend, now his wife. The woman seemed to read from an intelligence document as she revealed his personal information, including where he lived, who his family and friends are and where he grew up. 

''It was clear she was reading from some kind of intelligence document...she was not trying to help as she had said, but to scare me. I then told her I will call her when I get to Johannesburg and set up a meeting. My conclusion, chairperson, was that it was a Bosasa operation meant to intimidate and scare me. She warned me I would be killed if I reported what she said to anyone.''

He said he searched the woman's phone number on Google, and discovered that it belonged to the late Benedicta Dube, a PR practitioner. Dube was also a journalist at Financial Mail, eTV and a former head of news at Power FM. 

Basson denied allegations that he took his family to former Bosasa COO Angelo Agrizzi's home for a visits.

''I saw that doing the rounds months ago, it is false. I never took my children on work appointments. I went to see Agrizzi by myself after he announced publicly that he was going to expose Bosasa. I was alone, and as journalist, wanted to extract more information from him to use in my investigations into Bosasa.''

Agrizzi's bomb shell testimony revealed that at least three journalists were paid bribes from 2012 by Bosasa to fend off the negative media reports. At least R30 000 was paid to Pinky Khoabane, who previously worked for the now defunct Gupta-owned newspaper, The New Age, another journalist he named as Ntuli and a Bongs from the Eastern Cape.

Agrizzi said at the time, Dube and a former journalist Stephen Laufer were Bosasa media consultants. He testified that Dube and Khoabane worked ''very closely'' with Bosasa and that the former received over R1-million in payments from Bosasa. Agrizzi said the company received monthly reports from the media consultants on Basson and Du Plessis and that ''everything was done by Bosasa'' to discredit the two journalists.