Johannesburg - "Our witnesses dropped us," Andrew Chauke, the head of the specialised commercial crime unit in the national department of public prosecutions (NDPP), said about the state having to withdraw its case against controversial mining personality Roger Kebble.

"Certain information [had these witnesses testified] invariably would have caused our case to be unwinnable," Chauke said, without allowing himself to be encouraged to elaborate further.

On Thursday, after two-and-a-half years and 16 individual court appearances, the NDPP withdrew its case.

Chris Jordaan, the national head of the specialised commercial crime unit, said: "Having assessed all the facts and having completed the investigation, we concluded there was no reasonable prospect of a successful prosecution."

Jordaan said he was not prepared to discuss why, after 30 months, the state had finally realised it could not prosecute Kebble.

"To take a case to court, the bottom line is that without a reasonable prospect of a successful prosecution, we would just be wasting taxpayers' money," Jordaan said.

Had the state chosen to go ahead with no realistic chance of success, it "could have been guilty of malicious prosecution".

The charges relate to payments of R6.3 million made to Skilled Labour Brokers, one of Kebble's companies, by Durban Roodepoort Deep (DRD, now DRDGold) when Kebble was the chairman of DRD.

It was alleged that Kebble benefited personally and that he did not disclose his relationship with Skilled Labour Brokers to the DRD board.

Kebble maintained his innocence and explained that Skilled Labour Brokers had merely been used as a conduit to pay an outside contractor, Ronnie Watson, to protect Watson's identity over a period of seven years prior to 2002.

The charges encompassed 38 individual charges of fraud.

According to a statement released by Kebble's communications team, Kebble believes "the true genesis of the case stems from an abuse of power involving ex-head of the NDPP, Bulelani Ngcuka, and certain of his cohorts. Mr Kebble has already provided evidence of this to the public protector, who is investigating the matter."

With acknowledgements to Nicky Smith and the Business Report.