Related Articles
Top Stories
May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
May 28 2012 07:53
The City of Cape Town has spent R175m running the Myciti bus service since the Soccer World Cup compared to an income of R35m, a report says.
Cape Town - Gary Porritt, who faces more than 3 000 charges of fraud, is going to court to avoid being represented by "mediocre" lawyers.
The two accused in South Africa's biggest white-collar fraud case to date - businessman Gary Porritt and his assistant Susan Bennett - have now turned to the Constitutional Court to prevent "average" advocates being appointed to defend them in the Johannesburg High Court.
Porritt headed companies like Tigon, Synergy Management and Majorshelf at the time Bennett and he were arrested seven years ago.
The charges against them include fraud, income-tax violation, contraventions of the Companies Act, the Stock Exchanges Control Act, and the Prevention Of Organised Crime Act, as well as infringements of exchange-control regulations.
There are more than 3 000 counts against them and the charge sheet runs to a sizeable 1 400 pages. The money value involved is about R240m.
The hearing is expected to take at least three years and Porritt and Bennett's legal fees, should they have to pay themselves, will run to about R60m.
In the Johannesburg High Court the two insisted they were broke and unable to afford their own counsel. Judge GA Borchers at the beginning of the year therefore ordered the Legal Aid Board to appoint two legal representatives for each of the accused, at the Legal Aid Board's rates.
In documents submitted to the Constitutional Court on Thursday, the two declare that such a complex and drawn-out case cannot be tackled with the services of the "average" type of advocates that the Legal Aid Board can afford.
The state's prosecution team has an unlimited budget of "taxpayers' " money and it would be an unconstitutional infringement of their right to equal treatment if they did not also get the best legal aid from the state.
They say they spent R23m on legal fees before their money dried up. "Now the High Court wants us to be saddled with average advocates with little experience who will be prepared - because they have small practices - to tie themselves up in a hearing that will last three or four years and ensure them [the advocates] of a small but regular income."
Porritt and Bennett say they are not insisting on appointing advocates of their own choosing, but certainly advocates that at least have a "reputation".
Their application is being considered by the judges of the constitutional court.
- Sake24.com
For more business news in Afrikaans, go to Sake24.com.