The Durban Magistrate’s Court has cancelled an arrest warrant for a businessman who implicated Inkatha Freedom Party officials in a scheme to transfer money from the provincial government to party coffers.
The businessman, Sateesh Isseri, spent more than a year on the witness protection programme after alerting police and the auditor general to the alleged scam. Isseri claims that after he blew the whistle on the fund-raising scheme he was framed with several criminal charges, including fraud and hijacking, all of which culminated in a warrant for his arrest issued in December last year.
Police and other KwaZulu-Natal officials have rejected the frame accusation, emphasising the fact that Isseri himself was involved in impropriety before going on the witness protection scheme. They have downplayed Isseri’s allegations about the IFP and civil servants friendly to the party. The IFP, meanwhile, has rejected the allegation that it or its officials were party to the scheme.
After the arrest warrant was issued, Isseri lodged an application to have it set aside — one of several court actions running between the protagonists in the saga. The case was set down for last week and on Thursday, shortly after the court postponed the matter for review, the state attorney wrote to Isseri’s lawyer that he was cancelling the arrest warrant.
“My client [the magistrate] has advised that the warrant of arrest issued on 7 December 1998 will be cancelled with immediate effect,” the office of the state attorney said. The letter did not include reasons for the cancellation of the warrant. Isseri’s attorney, Louis Hitchcock, later wrote to the state attorney and the police commercial branch that the warrant had been obtained on “untrue facts”, that there had been no reason to issue it as Isseri would have been happy to attend a trial, and that “there may well have been mala fides on the part of someone (excluding the magistrate)”.
Hitchcock attached an affidavit detailing his discussion with the magistrate who had issued the warrant. The magistrate confirmed that “she in all probability did not read the docket” before taking the decision, and had not considered any oral evidence or submissions.
The magistrate said that before coming to her, the investigating officer in the case had approached the senior public prosecutor, Barend Groen, with the docket. Groen had said there was a prima facie case, which had been her main reason for granting the warrant, the magistrate told the lawyer.
The province’s state attorney, Krish Govender, said he was looking into the whole case “very carefully”. Isseri himself has consistently contended that the charges against him have been trumped up in a bid to either lure him into a trap or discredit him. “I believe that high- level government officials are behind this campaign,” he said in December.
Isseri believes the campaign was stepped up after he started suing the province of KwaZulu-Natal last year for money he claims is lawfully owed to him in terms of a contract. It was through carrying out this contract – to supply medical equipment to the province — that he stumbled upon the alleged IFP scheme.
The Mail & Guardian reported last year on Isseri’s extraordinary claims of an alleged scam. In 1997 Isseri wrote a detailed statement about the scheme, which allegedly involved the selection of loyal businesspeople who over- invoiced the KwaZulu-Natal government and then split the proceeds with party officials.
The statement also recounted how he had been flown to a paramilitary camp on the pretext of a hunting trip at the Umfolozi game reserve. There he saw many army and police vehicles, as well as several Springbok patrol vans.
Springbok patrols, now Khulani Springbok, has been linked to third force activities in the province. Shortly after having written the statement for the police, Isseri and his family went on to the witness protection programme.
However, the controversial former attorney general of KwaZulu-Natal, Tim McNally, last September took Isseri off the programme, and questioned his credibility in a press statement. McNally said he would not institute any prosecution based on Isseri’s claims.
But the thrust of Isseri’s statement has been borne out in court papers before the Durban High Court filed by the office of former provincial premier Ben Ngubane. The papers were filed in response to a civil suit Isseri is running against the province.
The province has admitted in its court papers that two cheques worth R790 000 were issued to Isseri for the medical equipment he supplied, but claims the officials who issued them were involved in a fraudulent conspiracy with Isseri. The civil case, which should throw much light on the saga, was postponed last December, and the litigants are now awaiting a new court date.
Isseri’s legal team last week asked for an early trial date, a request which was not opposed by the state. The court made an order that the civil case would get preference on the trial roll. When the arrest warrant was issued last December, a leading KwaZulu-Natal newspaper wrote a lead story on the charges against Isseri, accompanied with a photograph of Isseri and contact telephone numbers of the policemen hunting for him.
The newspaper later published a description of his car and its number plates. The IFP has sued the M&G for R250 000 for its coverage of the story. The trial is set down for June 2.