IPTS fraud trial off to rocky start
Volumes of exhibits, including nine lever-arch files containing bank statements of those allegedly involved in the multimillion-rand Integrated Public Transport System (IPTS) fraud case, set the tone for proceedings in the high court yesterday.
With most of the day spent submitting the exhibits to the court and making copies of copious pages of evidence, the state’s first witness, forensic investigator Burt Botha, was sworn in before yet another spanner was thrown in the works.
Botha, who compiled a 144page affidavit, was moments away from giving testimony when defence lawyers for disgraced businesswoman Andrea Wessels, her son Rukaard Abrahams, and former metro head of infrastructure and engineering Walter Shaidi, objected to it being read into the record.
Advocates Elsabet Theron for Abrahams, Clint Jacobs for Wessels, and attorney Robin O’Brien for Shaidi, raised the same objections, citing that they had not had sight of reports used to compile the affidavit and claiming it would not be in their clients’ interests to have the affidavit read into the record verbatim.
They said they had only received one report dated 2015, while Botha’s affidavit was signed in January.
State advocate Willie Kingsley assured the court that all parties had been supplied with the relevant documents before commencement of the trial.
According to Kingsley, Botha’s affidavit was a truncated version of a previous voluminous report which included evidence and names of other people not before court, and not relevant to the matter.
This prompted judge Phillip Zilwa to adjourn the matter to allow the defence to crosscheck with the state if all relevant reports had been shared.
Botha is expected to continue testifying today.
Wessels, Abrahams and Shaidi, along with attorney David Le Roux, his business Le Roux Inc, businessman Fareed Fakir, former assistant director in the metro’s budget and treasury department Nadia Gerwel, Mhleli Tshamase, who was initially in charge of the IPTS projects, axed deputy mayor and former ANC MPL Chippa Ngcolomba, and former Bay ANC regional secretary Zandisile Qupe, pleaded not guilty to a host of charges last month.
They face a total 16 counts of fraud, two of racketeering, 59 of money laundering, 53 of corruption, two counts of contravening the Criminal Procedure
Act (CPA) for supplying false information, two of contravening the CPA for impeding an accounting officer, and five counts of contravening the CPA by failing to report suspicious or unusual transactions.
It is alleged that between August 2013 and May 2015, the accused, including late former mayor Mongameli Bobani, colluded to use money given to the metro by the National Treasury to line their own pockets.
They were arrested in November 2020, and all were released on bail.
According to the state, an illegal enterprise was established, using now defunct companies registered in the names of Fakir, Wessels and Abrahams, to make sure the procurement processes of the metro, as well as its department’s system of financial and internal controls, were captured in an irregular manner by using a seemingly legitimate approach.
Bank statements from accounts in the names of all the accused, as well as Fakir’s now defunct businesses Heerkos, Jarami and companies Erastyle registered to Abrahams, Dankovista and Zeranza, registered to Wessels, as well as the Peculiar People’s Church and its former pastor, Victor Bassey, formed part of the bundles submitted to court yesterday.