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Johannesburg - Former Tigon CEO Gary Porritt and his business partner Sue Bennett’s marathon trial resumed on Monday with the suspected fraudsters' cross examination of the State’s star witness.
Porritt and Bennett have no legal representation and are handling the case themselves.
Critics have said that the pair had pulled every trick to delay justice and avoid a trial in one of the biggest financial scandals of the early millennium. Progressive Systems College Guaranteed Growth (PSCGG), an investment vehicle that was underwritten by Tigon, allegedly defrauded more than 2 000 people, including pensioners, in a scam involving then fortuitous JSE-listed financial services group Tigon.
The saga has been ongoing for more than 17 years. Bennett, a PSCGG director, and Porritt were arrested in 2002 and face 3 160 charges under the Companies Act, Stock Exchange Control Act and Income Tax Act, as well as fraud and racketeering. Bennett was also a Tigon director.
Reports suggested that Porritt and Bennett had already spent more than R23m in legal fees during their decade-long trial.
The State’s lead witness, former PSCGG CEO Jack Milne, pleaded guilty in 2007, and had been released after serving eleven months of his five year sentence, while Porritt and Bennett have been in and out of court since 2006.
Milne’s testimony started back in 2016, but cross examination only started on Monday. Earlier he had testified that he and the duo committed deliberate fraud by making misrepresentations to lure investors, convincing them that Tigon underwrote the investments and that their money was safe.
But the house of cards collapsed in 2002 when Tigon failed to honour its guarantees, and investors lost around R162m in the process. Tigon was liquidated in 2005.
The original indictment against them ran to 1 400 pages and parties involved estimated that as much as many as 3 000 witnesses could testify.
The court had heard that Bennett was also romantically involved with Porritt, who was estranged from his wife.
Earlier, in 2007, the duo had pleaded poverty to the judge, saying they had no money. This was contradicted by the investigating officer Sandra van Wyk who testified that Porritt could access assets worth more than R100m through trusts. Investigations are ongoing about where the truth lies.
They had been represented at various stages by Legal Aid, and at times by lawyers paid for by their children.
But Porritt and Bennett’s lack of representation has hampered the pace of the trial, and has created a possible basis for an appeal and subsequent mistrial.
But Judge Brian Spilg, conscious of delaying justice further, had painstakingly explained the repercussions of a decision to forego counsel in order to head off such a move.
Both defendants had also accused Spilg of being biased, but so far a formal motion for Spilg to recuse himself is yet to be presented. Spilg withdrew Porritt’s bail in June last year after an incident where he failed to appear in court, claiming that he was too sick.
After a dramatic collapse in court, Spilg had enough and ordered him to be taken into custody.
Also earlier the Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed Porritt and Bennett’s appeal to throw out their case, after the Johannesburg High Court had initially ruled that the two advocates on the prosecuting team could be removed because of concerns about bias.
The trial has seen a number of judges come and go, but Spilg has been firm with the pair, admonishing Porritt a number of times.
Cross examination will continue on Wednesday.
