The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is under fire for alleged prosecutorial misconduct with prominent businessman Kishene Chetty accusing the NPA's Investigative Directorate of improperly reinstating charges against him.
Chetty claims the decision to revive charges, previously struck off the court roll in March 2021 in term’s of a 342A (3)(c), was driven by personal vendettas and were circumvented by the NDPP showing apartheid tactics rather than legal merit.
According to the businessman, the reinstated charges were simply recycled from an earlier case, suggesting a pattern of procedural abuse.
“During early January 2022, three new case dockets were registered by the investigating officer, who is also the complainant being Sergeant Sunil Bellochun, advocate Tilas Richard Chabalala as prosecutor and lead investigator from ID, Dylan Peruma, is as follows, Silverton Cas 143/01/2022, Silverton Cas 144/01/2022 and Silverton Cas 145/01/2022.
“Strangely all the warrants of arrest for these cases were authorised on the same day by advocate Chabalala, being January 11, 2022.
“The accused are currently facing similar charges under the guise of the above new dockets orchestrated and taken to Palm Ridge Magistrate’s Court, SAPS Silverton CAS 143/01/2022; the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court, SAPS Silverton CAS 144/01/2022 and SAPS Silverton CAS 145/01/2022; the Pretoria Commercial Crimes Court, Brooklyn CAS 142/10/2022 and Brooklyn CAS 147/10/2022,” Chetty said.
All these cases pointed to the fact that all those charges were taken from the Silverton Case 335/05/2020, which was struck off the roll in 2020, he said.
In his sworn oath, Bellochun admits that he got some of the information from the original docket 335/05/2020, which he got from Colonel R Joubert.
“As part of our investigations information was requested from Colonel R Joubert (Joubert) on 2020-11-26 with regard to a company named Paroex Auto Tech and Mechanical Holdings with registration number 2016/504412/07 (Paroex).
“The information supplied by Joubert indicated that a number of contracts for goods and services were awarded to Paroex as contained in annexure marked SB1,” Bellochun disclosed in his statement.
The Star can confirm from the papers it has at its disposal that Chetty and his co-accused were charged with corruption from the case that was thrown out of court in March 2022.
The documents the publication has seen, clearly show that all the charges were copied and pasted from the initial dropped charges.
Over the past years, the NPA has been accused of abusing its prosecutorial powers in an attempt to prosecute and silence “suspects with chargers that are questionable”.
In 2016, then-suspended KwaZulu-Natal Hawks commander Johan Booysen had launched a devastating legal attack on the fired national director of public prosecutions (NDPP), Shaun Abrahams, accusing him of what he termed “a clear abuse of prosecutorial power”.
In his papers lodged at the Pietermaritzburg High Court, Booysen alleged that Abrahams’s decisions to reauthorise racketeering charges against him and 17 other policemen “were part of a pattern of illegal activity by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) aimed at prosecuting them for crimes they have not committed, and with a clearly ulterior purpose”.
Booysen argued that he had been targeted by the police and the NPA because of his sustained attempts to investigate senior members of the police, including then-KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Mmamonnye Ngobeni and politically-connected businessperson Thoshan Panday.
When The Star reached out to advocate Chabalala regarding claims of personal bias against Chetty, he stated that he harbours personal grudges only against criminals in general.
“I don’t have personal grudges against Chetty, I have no time for personal vendettas. I am doing my job as a prosecutor,” the advocate said.
Earlier this year, Gauteng Judge President Dustin Mlambo slammed a law firm for submitting duplicate applications.
Mlambo found that the law firm abused court processes when it submitted six identical applications, replicated six times with the same grammatical mistakes, placing them on the urgent roll -- the only difference being the names and country of origin.
Ironically, the prosecution in the Chetty matter used the same method to unfairly prosecute them.
The judge president said this abuse and the “alarming practice of using identical affidavits save for personal details” were not novel, and courts had previously put an end to it in matters involving sequestrations and other issues involving refugees.
Judge Mlambo said a careful analysis of the six applications which came before him “clearly confirms that what was placed before the court was a single affidavit, reproduced six times with minor changes”.
This was an abuse of the court process and exploitation of vulnerable asylum seekers “who likely do not understand what they are deposing to”.
“The State attorneys, who had received the matters, must also be taken to task for their negligence in not realising the repeated use of identical affidavits.
“This conduct must be brought to the attention of the minister (of Justice) to consider whether it is necessary to put measures in place that could prevent such abuse,” added Judge Mlambo.
The Star