A DAY before the Constitutional Court sits to hear whether he should be permitted to appeal against his fraud and corruption sentence, fraud convict Schabir Shaik was removed yesterday from the Inkosi Albert Luthuli hospital — where he had spent a month — and sent back to Westville prison.

The decision by Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour to move him was slammed by Shaik’s brother, Mo Shaik, who said yesterday that the inspecting judge of prisons, Judge Nathan Erasmus, had found nothing wrong with Shaik’s stay at the hospital.

Erasmus said the inspectorate checked the prison and medical records to confirm why Shaik had been sent to hospital. Erasmus also found that Shaik was not being held under relaxed conditions and said security was tight.

Balfour told the portfolio committee on correctional services yesterday that he had sent Shaik back to prison following a report from the department’s doctors. Balfour said it would be unethical to make the report public.

Mo Shaik said he was called by a prison official at 4am yesterday and told that Schabir Shaik would be taken back to the prison.

“The problem with this is that the (inspecting) judge found that there was no special treatment given to Schabir. Doctors treating Schabir have found his condition to be serious. It is time the minister gave us an explanation of his high-handed behaviour,” he said.

“The minister is quite aware that we are busy with a challenge to the Constitutional Court.” The court will sit for two days from today to hear Shaik’s application for leave to appeal against the Supreme Court of Appeal judgment which confirmed convictions and sentences imposed on Shaik and his companies.

The application would be argued in two parts, the first related to the criminal proceedings and the second related to the subsequent confiscation of assets. The court would not hear the merits of the appeals but would only determine whether Schabir and his companies should be allowed to appeal against the judgments, and if so, on what grounds.

Shaik was sentenced to 15 years on two counts of corruption and one of fraud. He was found guilty of paying former deputy president Jacob Zuma’s expenses in return for Zuma’s backing in business deals.

He was also found guilty of seeking bribes from French arms company Thint on Zuma’s behalf in order to secure protection for Thint from a probe into SA’s multimillion-rand arms deal.

With acknowledgements to Ernest Mabuza and Business Day.