Porritt implicated in fraud charges

CROSS-EXAMINATION GOES WRONG Judge: Bennett’s implicated every time Milne admits to lying in the ‘interview’.

In an effort to expose alleged document tampering by the state and lies by its first witness Jack Milne, Tigon-accused Sue Bennett on Friday implicated her co-accused Gary Porritt in fraud and raised serious questions about her own role in the events.

Porritt and Bennett are on trial for more than 3 000 charges of fraud, racketeering and contraventions of the Income Tax Act, the Companies Act and the Stock Exchange Control Act.

The charges relate to the collapse of financial services group Tigon around 2002.

Due to numerous applications and appeals by the accused the beginning of the trial was delayed until late in 2016 and it has been dragging on since, with Milne now being cross-examined by Bennett.

Both accused are without legal representation, claiming they don’t have the money to pay lawyers.

The state however accused them of using legal representation and the lack thereof as a strategy and alleged that Porritt has access to assets worth over R100 million.

Bennett questioned Milne about a purported interview he gave in March 2002, where he stated that his investment fund, Progressive Systems College Guaranteed Growth (PSCGG) which was underwritten by Tigon, invested in blue chip companies with substantial rand hedge and derivatives among other things.

The document Bennett based her questions on appeared to be an email sent to Milne, Porritt and Bennett by PSCGG employee Marlene Brits. It contained a purported interview for publication in Beeld newspaper a few days later. Bennett didn’t know whether it was indeed published in Beeld.

Milne admitted the statements were untrue, since PSCGG was only invested in the shares of Tigon and its subsidiary Shawcell.

Milne earlier testified that he, Porritt and Bennett conspired to defraud investors when they devised the PSCGG investment scheme and they intentionally misled them in drafting the prospectus. He admitted to the fraud years ago, reached a plea and sentence agreement with the state and served jail time.

Judge Brian Spilg told Bennett that every time Milne admitted to lying in the “interview”, he implicated her, because the interview containing the false statements was emailed to her before publication. Bennett said she only got the Afrikaans version and she doesn’t understand Afrikaans.

Milne hit back, saying she saw everything that went to the media beforehand and it’s unlikely Brits would have sent her only the Afrikaans version.

Spilg told Bennett the case against her and Porritt may well be decided on whether the state can show a paper trail and whether they can exclude any other possibility that the money was unlawfully appropriated by them.

The original document bears Porritt’s signature in pencil, indicating that he saw it at the time.

Spilg instructed Porritt to note if he wants to deny that it’s indeed his original signature. “If not, it will be taken to be original and received before publication, therefore you would have been a party to the fraud Bennett said was perpetrated.”

The trial continues today.