Publication: Cape Argus
Issued:
Date: 2006-11-06
Reporter: Gill Gifford
Reporter: Karyn Maughan
Reporter: Jeremy Gordin
| Publication |
Cape Argus
|
| Date |
2006-11-06
|
|
Reporter
|
Karyn
Maughan, Jeremy Gordin,
Gill Gifford |
|
Web Link
|
www.capeargus.co.za
|
Appeal
rejected - and findings leave Zuma on the hook
Schabir Shaik has lost
his appeal against his convictions and sentences for fraud and corruption - and
faces 15 years behind bars.
Today the full bench of the Supreme Court of
Appeal in Bloemfontein unanimously rejected all his grounds for
appeal.
The five judges also ruled that his corrupt relationship with
former deputy president Jacob Zuma had damaged the "moral
fibre of the people".
Shaik heard the news from the Appeal Court
with a heavy heart.
"I can't believe it," he said. "Boom, boom, boom, 1,
2, 3, they didn't uphold anything. All the lawyers were wrong about what was
going to happen."
What was extremely worrying to him was the Supreme
Court of Appeal's denial of leave to appeal on Count 1, making it more difficult
to go for a constitutional court appeal.
He immediately went into a meeting
with his brothers on the stoep of the Cape Town hotel where they are
staying.
NPA spokesman Makhosini Nkosi said today that Shaik would be
expected to report to prison "within 48 hours".
Shaik would probably be
assigned to Durban Westville jail.
Not only did the Supreme Court of
Appeal roundly reject Shaik's legal arguments today, it also potentially
bolstered the State's proposed corruption case against Jacob Zuma.
One of
the most damaging rulings by the five judges
concerned the contentious encrypted fax that the
judge in the original trial, Mr Justice Hilary Squires, admitted as evidence
that Shaik had tried to elicit a R500 000 bribe for Zuma from French arms firm
Thint.
The Appeal Court judges found that it was in the interests of
justice that the fax be admitted.
Although acknowledging that the author
of the fax, Thint representative Alain Thetard, seemed to be "an unreliable and
dishonest person", the court noted that it "did not follow that he was also
unreliable or dishonest in respect of what he recorded in the fax".
In
deciding to uphold Judge Squires's decision to admit the fax as evidence, the
court has kept both Zuma and Thint on the
hook.
Explaining why the court saw no reason to reduce Shaik's
15-year sentence, Judge President Craig Howie said that "given the very high
level of corruption that this case involved ... it attacks the moral fibre of
the people and inhibits its development".
The five judges agreed with the
Durban High Court that Shaik had made 238 payments to Zuma totalling R1.2
million.
"We accept that the friendship was aggressively exploited by
Shaik for his own business interests."
The judges found Shaik had been
correctly convicted on the charge of corruption, and of fraud in the writing off
of the R1.2m.
"The seriousness of the offence of corruption cannot be
over-emphasised," they said.
"It offends against the
rule of law and the principle of good governance. It lowers the moral tone of a
nation and negatively affects development and the promotion of human
rights.
"As a country, we have travelled a long and tortuous road
to achieve democracy. Corruption threatens our
constitutional order.
"We must make every
effort to ensure that corruption, with its putrefying effects, is
halted."
During Shaik's trial last year, Judge Squires identified
four key episodes as "examples of interventions by Zuma to protect, assist or
further Shaik's business interests" in exchange for payments totalling
R1.2m.
The Court of Appeal dismissed argument by Shaik's counsel that the
payments to Zuma were made out of friendship, not cold-blooded
opportunism.
It was contended that the prosecution had failed to "show a
single instance in which Zuma used or attempted to use any decision-making
powers he might have had … to influence the award of any contract or tender or
any other government work to Shaik or his companies".
On Count 2, Judge
Squires found that Shaik had defrauded his own companies to conceal his payments
to Zuma.
Throughout the appeal, the Supreme Court of Appeal judges
indicated that his efforts to appeal against his fraud conviction were the least impressive *1.
They dismissed Shaik's
argument that the writing-off of the debts incurred by his payments to Zuma was
done by his accountant without his knowledge.
With acknowledgements to Karyn
Maughan, Jeremy Gordin, Gill Gifford
and Cape Argus.
*1 The most impressive were the
applicants' efforts to appeal against the admissibility of the encrypted fax and
their explanation that the payment from Thomson-CSF was a donation to an
education trust - only to be trumped by their later attempt at an explanation
that Shaik was indeed trying to defraud Thomson-CSF using Zuma's
name.
100% for ingenuity, 0% for success.
Now it's Thomson-CSF's
turn to explain.
How about a bit more of that charming gallic candour, Mr
Moynot?