Young is a director of CCII Systems, which lost out in 1999 to the subsidiary of French arms company Thomson-CSF *1, now known as Thales, to supply information management systems for the navy’s four corvettes.

His application is expected to bolster that of the DA following questions about whether the party had legal standing to pursue this matter. A date for the hearing will be set next week.

Young said last September that he addressed an application to Mpshe regarding the prosecution of Zuma, Thint Holdings and Thint.

He made three submissions to Mpshe and received a letter dated March 20 2009 from advocate Billy Downer which stated that Mpshe had decided not to accede to Young’s request to make oral representations.

Young said that, in withdrawing the charges against Zuma and Thint, Mpshe based his decision on the narrowest of points, saying there was an abuse of process pertaining to the personal interest shown by former Scorpions head Leonard McCarthy and former prosecuting authority head Bulelani Ngcuka.

“In my view, such ‘abuse’, if abuse it is, is comparatively insubstantial and is vastly outweighed by the constitutional imperative that the national director of public prosecutions and the National Prosecuting Authority prosecute accused persons where there is a prima facie case.”

Young said Mpshe apparently also based his decision to withdraw charges on a foreign judgment, and in the process ignoring recent jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Appeal. “Furthermore, it has since come to light that the Hong Kong judgment on which (Mpshe) relied was in any case overturned on appeal.”

With acknowledgements to Ernest Mabuza and Business Day.