Publication: Sunday Independent Issued: Date: 2006-01-22 Reporter: Jeremy Gordin

Shaik says Malice and Spite are Behind Bitter Fight over Assets

 

Publication 

Sunday Independent
Date

2006-01-22

Reporter

 Jeremy Gordin

Web Link

www.sundayindependent.co.za

 

The arguments and issues were complicated and often abstract, but an extremely bitter battle was waged this week in the Durban high court before Judge Hilary Squires.

"Spite, sheer spite and malice, can be the only reason why the state and its Asset Forfeiture Unit [AFU] are going after our money," said Mo Shaik, who has taken over the management of his brother Schabir Shaik's Nkobi group of companies.

"My brother has already been punished and it is not as though *1 we were dealing with drug money or money that was stolen from the poor," he said.

"I saw people there whom I know well from my days as an activist, such as Willie Hofmeyr [chief of the unit], and it broke my heart. There is no reason for any of it except to hurt the Shaik family."

Represented by advocate Wim Trengove, SC, and Alfred Cockrell, the AFU argued before Squires this week that about R34 million of Nkobi money should be confiscated, including Nkobi's 20 percent share in African Defence Systems (ADS). The majority of the shares of ADS are held by Thales, the French arms manufacturer and dealer, which entered into a joint venture with Nkobi some years ago.

The unit claims that the Nkobi shares were obtained as a result of Shaik's corrupt relationship with Zuma and were therefore the proceeds of crime.

According to the Prevention of Organised Crime Act, the state can apply for a civil order confiscating any assets proven by the same court to have been obtained as a result of the crime with which the court has already dealt.

Shaik was convicted last year by Squires on two counts of corruption and one of fraud. He was sentenced to 15 years in jail and refused leave to appeal on one of the counts of corruption. He has since been allowed by the supreme court of appeal to seek leave to appeal on that count.

At the end of Shaik's criminal trial last year, and pending the outcome of this week's application, Squires granted an order restraining assets worth R28 million.

The state argued this week that Shaik's R21 million stake in ADS was secured through his corrupt relationship with Jacob Zuma, the former deputy president. This benefit, including a further R12,7 million Shaik earned in dividends from shares in the arms company, must be confiscated - thus sending a clear message to South Africans that "crime does not pay".

Shaik's lawyers, Francois van Zyl, SC, and Nirmal Singh, SC, argued that the contract with Thales had been agreed to before Zuma's intervention and that Zuma's role was not criminal because he had been acting as deputy ANC president, not in an "official" capacity as MEC. Squires found during the main trial that Zuma's interventions as a member of the ANC could not be considered illegal.

Regarding Shaik's shares in ADS, Van Zyl said that to confiscate these would be a "double repayment".

Squires said he would hand down judgment in due course.

• Additional material by Tania Broughton

With acknowledgements to Jeremy Gordin and Sunday Independent.


*1  Corruption is never a victimless crime.

Other than as regarding its direct victims, it is an insidious evil.

Each instance of corruption is a step on the slippery slope towards the breakdown of society and eventual anarchy.

In the end, the chief victim of corruption is the peaceful and orderly co-existence of humankind