Dr Eugene Berg, the Cape Town advocate who helped Pretoria millionaire attorney Albert Vermaas to establish a bank to channel millions of rand into an unlawful investment scheme, was sentenced on Tuesday to five years in prison.
There were 14 charges of fraud, theft and contravening the Banks and Companies Acts against Berg. Pretoria High Court Judge Martin Stegmann imposed a sentence of 12 years and six months, of which Berg will serve five years, and a fine of R3 300.
Berg’s trial was delayed when it was separated from that of Vermaas, and also by various legal proceedings in which he sought to quash the charges against him. Vermaas is presently serving 18 years in effect, after being sentenced on a total of 111 charges of fraud and contravening the Banks, Companies and Insolvency Acts.
Individual investors lost over R139-million when Vermaas’s scheme collapsed in the late 1980s. Berg (56) was granted a temporary reprieve from jail when Stegmann extended his bail to Friday, when his application for leave to appeal will be heard. In 1988 Berg practised as an advocate and had several businesses in Pretoria, but stopped practising after his arrest in that year. He and his British wife are now the directors of several companies and trusts in the Cape Town area, buying and selling property and insolvent companies.
Stegmann said Berg believed he and Vermaas were above the law because of Vermaas’ connections with prominent people in the apartheid-era Cabinet and Defence Force. As a lawyer he should have shown more respect for the law. Berg had known very well that Vermaas was willfully disregarding the Banks and Usury Act, but was nevertheless willing to help him to bring his illegal investment scheme into the fold of a bank in order to continue the scheme, in which Berg and his companies had invested millions of rand.
The court had taken into account that Vermaas, who was ten years Berg’s senior, had a great influence over him.
”Without Vermaas it was unlikely that Berg would have committed any of the crimes,” Stegmann said. The effect of his arrest and association with Vermaas had also been devastating on Berg’s health, career, financial position and personal life. His first wife divorced him and took everything he owned after his arrest. – Sapa