Gary Porritt, the 71-year-old former CEO of one-time listed monetary providers group Tigon, who has been sitting in jail since June 2017 whereas his prison trial drags on, has introduced an urgent utility to win again his freedom.
Porritt and his co-accused and former Tigon director Sue Bennett are going through greater than 3 000 fees, together with fraud, racketeering and contraventions of the Income Tax Act associated to the collapse of Tigon in round 2002.
Before the collapse, Tigon was the most effective performing inventory on the JSE.
The two had been arrested in 2002 and 2003 respectively, however the trial earlier than Judge Brian Spilg solely started late in 2016 after quite a few delays – due, amongst others, to functions and appeals introduced by the accused.
Both are representing themselves, pleading poverty, with Porritt’s household partaking counsel for him from time to time.
The utility
The High Court in Johannesburg will on Friday (9 December) hear Porritt’s habeas corpus utility. Habeas corpus is a authorized mechanism accessible to defend detainees in opposition to illegal imprisonment.
Bennett is the second applicant, and the respondent is the state.
They ask the court docket to:
- Declare the present wording of sub-sections of Section 67 of the Criminal Procedures Act unconstitutional and subsequently illegal;
- Order Porritt’s instant launch; and
- Return the R100 000 bail cash he forfeited when he failed to seem in court docket in June 2017.
Porritt in his founding affidavit locations the highlight firmly on Spilg’s rulings when he ordered the previous businessman’s arrest five-and-a-half years in the past.
Arrest
At the time Porritt was admitted to a medical facility following unexplained blackouts he skilled, together with whereas eating with a feminine buddy in a restaurant in Pietermaritzburg.
He was arrested on the medical facility and brought in a police car to court docket in Johannesburg, the place Spilg held an enquiry in phrases of Section 67 of the Criminal Procedures Act into his failure to attend court docket.
Following intensive testimony, together with from medical medical doctors who noticed him in Pietermaritzburg, Spilg got here to the conclusion that Porritt had intentionally prevented showing in court docket.
He has been held in the Johannesburg Central Prison ever since and has failed to get his freedom again regardless of two bail functions, an enchantment to a full bench and a subsequent petition for go away to enchantment to the Supreme Court.
The Constitutional Court additionally in November quashed the hopes of Tigon duo to get rid of Spilg as presiding officer in the prison trial when it refused go away to enchantment Spilg’s October 2020 choice not to recuse himself.
In his founding affidavit Porritt argues that his incarceration has positioned him in circumstances the place he can’t correctly put together for the trial and should depend on Bennett, additionally a lay particular person. She is free on a warning and lives in Knysna.
According to Porritt this has rendered his trial unfair and should end result in a mistrial.
A ‘non-violent accused who missed a court date’
He complains of the “injustice of a presiding officer holding a summary enquiry resulting in an unlimited and extended imprisonment (as a detainee) for a non-violent accused who missed a court date because he had been suffering from a medical disability which had not yet been diagnosed, and which the medical specialists testified, before the presiding officer needed to be investigated so that he could be appropriately treated and managed”.
Porritt may have to cross a number of technical hurdles earlier than the deserves of his utility will likely be heard.
The state is difficult:
- The urgency of the matter, arguing that it has been adjudicated by a reliable court docket and subsequently might not be pursued additional by the identical events;
- The utility itself, saying it’s faulty due to Porritt’s failure to be part of the minister of justice and constitutional improvement in relation to his assault on the Criminal Procedures Act; and
- For mistakenly becoming a member of Bennett as an applicant, as she has no authorized standing in the matter.
In a observe be aware the state says: “The judgment of Mr. Justice Spilg was confirmed by a Full Bench of this division, with particular reference to the way in which Mr. Justice Spilg held that Section 67 supplies for an evidentially burden not a full onus and subsequently utilized a much less stringent take a look at for the First Applicant to fulfill.
“Applications for go away to enchantment to each the Supreme Court of Appeal and the President of the Supreme Court of Appeal had been unsuccessful.
“The factual matrix in the judgment of Mr. Justice Spilg as confirmed by the Full Bench of this division, can therefore not be disturbed by this Honourable Court. This Honourable Court cannot sit as a court of appeal.”
Wants prison trial halted for now
In the prison trial, which Porritt desires to be halted till this new problem of his has been concluded, the primary witness for the state – co-conspirator and convicted fraudster Jack Milne – attended court docket for a full 140 days and thus far solely three witnesses, together with Milne, have accomplished their testimony.
The different two are forensic auditor Professor Harvey Wainer and Linda MacPhail, who testified a few PwC investigation into Tigon’s monetary affairs.
Accountant Grant Ramsay, who turned state witness, has accomplished his proof in chief and is presently being cross-examined by Bennett.
The prison trial has been postponed to 16 January 2023.