On a balmy evening in June 2015, four men with deep Swazi connections were preparing to take on the night in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur.
It had been a year since Sibusisiwe Mngomezulu was posted at the Eswatini High Commission in Kuala Lumpur as a counsellor and, as evidenced by the picture of the group posted by his friend Musa Sibandze, he was taking a break from his diplomatic duties.
The blurry photo shows the men in clumsy poses behind a kitchen island covered with an assortment of half-empty liquor bottles and mixers.
Sitting on a bar stool in a blue V-neck T-shirt is Bongani Mahlalela, the chief financial officer (CFO) of South Africa's governing party, the African National Congress (ANC).
The man leaning on the island pointing at the camera next to him is Mngomezulu, Eswatini's current ambassador to Belgium and a brother-in-law to King Mswati III.
He was previously the head of finance, strategy and business development for the ANC's investment arm, Chancellor House Holdings.
On the outer corner is the youngest in this group, Craig Coglin; who, according to LinkedIn, was the group strategy director for the Coglin Media House.
And behind all three, with his left hand in the air, is Sibandze.
"We [sic] about to go out," reads Sibandze's Facebook caption. "Clear the way we're coming through."
While Sibandze played no role in the events described here, his three companions would get involved in more than a wild night out.
In the following years they would seemingly facilitate a dizzying set of transactions that would channel millions to accounts belonging to popular Eswatini Archbishop Bheki Lukhele and his All Nations Christian Church in Zion.
These suspicious money flows eventually attracted the attention of the Eswatini Financial Intelligence Unit (EFIU), which suspected money laundering and the possible theft of money from South Africa's governing party, the ANC.
