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Cape Town - A case of collusion involving the family of convicted Paralympian Oscar Pistorius is set to proceed after lawyers failed in their bid to have the charges dismissed on Thursday.
Lawyers for Hendrik Pistorius & Co, which deals with agricultural lime and which was founded by Pistorius's grandfather, appeared before the Competition Tribunal.
This after the Competition Commission filed an application to have the company, along with eight other respondents, fined for allegedly being part of a price-fixing cartel from 1995 to May 2008.
The commission alleges that the respondents agreed or entered into a concerted practice to fix the commissions payable by each of them to fertiliser companies who employ agents to market, sell and distribute agricultural lime.
Agricultural lime, also known as Aglime, is a soil additive that is produced from pulverised limestone or chalk. The purpose of the liming is to address soil acidity, meaning that it increases the pH of the soil from acidic to neutral, thereby rendering more nutrients, already in the soil, to be available to plants.
"The respondents contravened section 4(1)(b)(i) of the [Competition] Act by entering into agreements and/or concerted practice to fix the amounts of the agents' commissions," said the commission in its founding affidavit after a complaint of price fixing was lodged.
They want an administrative penalty of 10% of the company's turnover over the period of the alleged price-fixing or an amount as determined by the Tribunal.
Amendments
The Competition Tribunal's Chantelle Benjamin told Fin24 that lawyers for the Pistorius family wanted the matter to be thrown out. They argued that the charges fell outside of the seven years allowed for prosecution.
However, the tribunal granted the commission a postponement so that it could make amendments to the matter.
Benjamin said these included changing the charges to the name of the trading company, which is the Hendrik Pistorius Trust, and to indicate that the transgressions took place until 2009.
No date has been set for the matter to resume.
Oscar Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in his Pretoria home on Valentine's Day in 2013, claiming he mistook her for an intruder hiding in his toilet.
He served one-sixth of his five-year sentence for culpable homicide in prison. He was released in October last year to serve the remainder under correctional supervision at his uncle's Pretoria home.
The State approached the Supreme Court of Appeal to have the conviction of culpable homicide set aside. On December 3 last year, the court found in favour of the State and found him guilty of murder.
Pistorius now faces a minimum sentence of 15 years and will hear his fate when sentencing proceedings commence on June 13.
