It would be unfair and unjust to force alleged millionaire fraudster David King to enter his marathon criminal trial without legal representation, a High Court judge said on Tuesday.
Judge Ronnie Bosielo directed the National Prosecuting Authority to assist King to have reasonable funds made available for his defence and to meet with King’s legal representatives to discuss ways to ensure that his assets, currently under restraint orders here, in the United Kingdom and Guernsey, were released for this purpose.
The parties will have to report back to the Pretoria High Court about the outcome of their meeting on September 18. It is expected that the trial will be postponed again on that date to give King time to prepare his defence.
King has not yet been asked to plead to 322 charges of fraud, racketeering and contraventions of the Income Tax Act and Exchange Control Regulations.
He claimed the prosecution had deliberately frozen his assets and refused him reasonable access to the funds in order to force him to conduct his own defence.
The prosecution, however, claimed King lived a lavish lifestyle, spent over R2,4-million per month and had funds hidden somewhere else in the world to fund his defence.
Judge Bosielo said the frozen funds — although alleged to be the proceeds of crime — were sufficient to be used for King’s legal representation and there was nothing in the law to prevent such funds from being made available for his defence.
He rapped the prosecuting authority on the knuckles for giving King only 17 working days to prepare his defence. A revised charge sheet, comprising close to 800 pages, was only handed to him shortly before the trial was to commence and he has so far only received one portion of the 200 000-page docket.
He was forced to end the services of his legal team in June because of a lack of funds.
A legal battle about the cost of making the docket available to him was also still pending and it appeared that King intended attacking the constitutionality of the Exchange Control Regulations — for which he clearly needs time to prepare.
Bosielo said the numerous files that comprised the docket were not only voluminous, but intimidating as well. Both parties agreed that the case was highly technical and complex. It was arguably one of the most complex commercial matters in the country thus far.
The judge said he wondered how on earth King was supposed to have studied and understood the docket while he was unrepresented and at best given 17 working days to prepare a defence — which could not by any stretch of the imagination be described as being given adequate and reasonable time to prepare.
It was patently clear, Judge Bosielo added, that unless King was assisted in some way to persuade the British, Guernsey and South African authorities to have the restraint orders against his assets relaxed, he would be forced to defend himself — a situation that would be unfair, unjust and not according to the ethos of the Constitution.
It could also lead to the untenable situation that the Judge would have to act as a judge and legal advisor to the accused. It would, in his view, be impractical, undesirable and not in the best interest of justice to let the accused commence with his trial without legal representation. — Sapa