Victory for Tekkie Town executives

The previous executives of both Tekkie Town and Steinhoff Africa Retail (Star) have declared victory following the handing down of a high court judgment on access to information on the firm’s IT system. In July, Star sought an urgent interdict to prevent the Tekkie Town executives from accessing information on hardware it accused them of illegally removing from the business premises.

The previous executives of both Tekkie Town and Steinhoff Africa Retail (Star) have declared victory following a high court judgment on access to information on the firm’s IT system.

In July, Star sought an urgent interdict to prevent the Tekkie Town executives from accessing information on hardware. Star accused them of illegally removing information from the business premises.

In addition, Pepkor accused Tekkie Town founder Braam van Huyssteen and other former employees of planning to sabotage the company’s IT system by disrupting the point-of-sale machines throughout all of Tekkie Town’s 389 stores.

The High Court in Cape Town ruled on Tuesday that the previous Tekkie Town executives may use confidential information stored on the firm’s e-mail database only if it relates to their personal business interests or if it is to be used in the ongoing litigation between the two parties. They must further destroy any proprietary or confidential information in their possession if it relates to the business of Tekkie Town and/or Star. They must further undertake to not access or interfere with any of Tekkie Town’s IT.

“We are satisfied that we achieved our objectives to protect the business from those who seek to undermine our efforts. Star and Tekkie Town will continue to use the necessary legal process to protect the business and this includes the possibility of criminal charges,” said Star CEO Leon Lourens.

Former Tekkie Town CEO Bernard Mostert said: “We successfully argued that we were legally entitled to copies of our personal and business e-mail messages from the Tekkie Town servers. We used our e-mail addresses for all our business communications — from the earliest years when Tekkie Town started and long before Steinhoff appeared on the scene.

“These are big businesses valued at more than R2bn and not related to Pepkor or their parent, Steinhoff, at all.”