FORMER police chief Jackie Selebi declassified a document from Crime Intelligence so he could share the information with his friend Glenn Agliotti, he told the Johannesburg high Court yesterday.

FORMER police chief Jackie Selebi declassified a document from Crime Intelligence so he could share the information with his friend Glenn Agliotti, he told the Johannesburg high Court yesterday.

"You, Mr Selebi, shared secret information with Agliotti, and to do that you declassified the document," said prosecutor Gerrie Nel. The document contains information about information peddlers, one of them being Jugen Kogel, and then "Selebi spread false accusations about the Kebbles running businesses for him".

"Did you show Mr Agliotti any documents containing information about Kogel?" Nel asked.

In response, Selebi said: "I would have shown him a document containing information about information peddlers, and Kogel was one of them ... because I was dealing with a person who was peddling wrong information about me."

Asked why he had approached Agliotti instead of going directly to the Kebbles as the allegations involved them, Selebi said he knew Agliotti "had a close relationship with the Kebbles so he'd know who Kogel was".

Like all proceedings since Nel started cross examining Selebi, the former police chief lost his cool when Nel probed him further on the Kogel matter, saying Nel was obnoxious - this after Nel wanted to know why he was changing his version regarding what he did after learning about the allegations against him. - Sapa