Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2007-03-26 Reporter: Edward West

Zuma, Shaik Trial Papers ‘Not Legal’

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2007-03-26

Reporter

 Edward West

Web Link

www.businessday.co.za

 

Durban ­ The legal teams of African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Jacob Zuma and French arms manufacturer Thint on Friday questioned the legality of copies of documents that were to have been used as evidence in Zuma’s trial last year, and in the trial of Zuma’s financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, for corruption in the arms deal.

Judge Philip Levenson said in the Pietermaritzburg High Court that he would make a ruling “in due course” on the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA’s) application for a letter signed by him requesting 13 documents from the Mauritian government which the NPA wants to use as part of its investigations into Zuma and Thint.

The NPA applied to the court on December 12 for a letter of request to the Mauritian attorney-general, seeking the release of documents seized during a raid on Thint’s offices in Mauritius and kept by that country’s courts.

The NPA says it has not yet taken a decision on whether to recharge Zuma.

The documents include the 2000 diary of Alain Thetard, former CE of Thint, the South African subsidiary of Thales.

Zuma’s laywer, Kemp J Kemp, said that if the letter of request was issued, cross-examination of witnesses to the documents in Mauritius might be impossible.

“Obvious questions regarding Thetard’s diary would be, for example, whether it served as a roster of future events or a historical recordal of these,” Kemp said. He said there were doubts about the legality of the way copies of the documents were obtained in Mauritius in 2001. “There is no record of the copies being made,” or of the delivery of the copies to the state attorney, Billy Downer, he said.

Downer had never claimed to have signed a receipt or other documents recording that he had been given the documents, or who gave him the documents or listing the copies which he had been given.

A later consent order on the documents by the Mauritius court was granted in which it was recorded that there was no record of any copies made by Mauritian officials.

“Are you suggesting these copies were made surreptitiously?” Judge Levenson asked. Kemp said there appeared to be “collective amnesia” among Mauritian officials *1 about the copies.

“All I’m saying is someone is not being entirely truthful,” he said. The Mauritian officials were perhaps being gagged by a confidentially agreement, he said.

Kemp also argued it would simply be “academic” and premature *2 for the high court to issue a letter of request because the NPA still needed to persuade the Mauritius High Court to lift an injunction against the distribution of the documents that was brought by Thales International in 2001.

Downer said in his rebuttal that the NPA accepted they would need to approach the Mauritius court to lift the injunction and the application for the letter of request was not an attempt to circumvent it. “If we don’t ask for the documents, how will we get them?” he said.

Thint’s advocate, Nirmal Singh, said the original letter of request for the search and seizure operations in Mauritius in 2001 had not been fully carried out because it had specified a “commission rigetoir” or a form of enquiry, on completion of the search and seizure operations, which had not taken place.

The letter of request appeared to have been modified to omit the requirement for the enquiry *3, without the court’s consent.

With acknowledgements to Edward West and Business Day.


*1       But there is no amnesia, collective or otherwise, among South African officials - that's what's important.


*2      What nonsense, The People represented by The State want these originals and want them now.

There is a Freedom of Information Act in Mauritius and a Promotion of Access to Information Act in the RSA.

The People represented by The State want this information and they want it now - why?*3


*3      The reason for the enquiry and the documents are because they are likely to indicate that a heinous crime was committed in South Africa.