The witness protection programme has ordered that luxury-loving fraud suspect Jurgen Harksen be sent back to jail ”with immediate effect”.
The German was put into the programme in May this year when he told the Desai Commission he believed he was threatened by people who wanted to prevent his testimony.
Judge Siraj Desai ruled earlier this week however that as his testimony had been finalised, his protective custody would end on Friday.
Representative for the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions Sipho Ngwema said in a statement on Friday: ”The witness protection programme, a division of the National Prosecuting Authority, has ordered Jurgen Harksen to be transferred to Goodwood Prison with immediate effect.”
Harksen was jailed in Goodwood following his arrest on charges of fraud at the end of March but claimed someone was leaving sleeping tablets on his pillow in an apparent attempt to encourage him to commit suicide.
His spell in witness protection, in a safe house presumably in the Cape Town area, erupted in controversy when it emerged his police guards had been taking him shopping and dining out.
Harksen is currently applying for bail in the Cape Town Regional Court. He is also challenging, through a High Court review, the extradition order signed on April 19 by Justice Minister Penuell Maduna.
He had consented verbally to the extradition, but afterwards retracted it. In addition to the South African fraud charges, Harksen is wanted in Germany on multi-billion-rand fraud and tax evasion charges.
Meanwhile, at the Desai Commission on Friday, it was ruled that expert evaluation of the audit done on the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) books earlier this year will not be admitted as evidence.
Judge Siraj Desai made the ruling on Friday morning after the DA’s legal team objected to a bid to have Greg Johnson, an accountant specialising in forensic investigation, take the stand.
Johnson was asked by the commission to evaluate the audit carried out by Ernst and Young of the DA accounts and those of Cape Town mayor Gerald Morkel.
The DA ordered the audit in May after German fraud suspect Jurgen Harksen told the commission he gave more than R1-million in donations to the party and Morkel.
According to the DA, the audit — of which the commission has a copy — found no evidence of any money from Harksen.
Desai said on Friday the advocate representing Morkel and the DA, Peter Hodes, had argued that his clients had not tendered the audit report to the commission. He also argued that apart from sections mentioned by witnesses, it should be disregarded.
The judge said the commission accepted Hodes’ invitation not to place any ”probative value” on the report. Johnson would accordingly not be called, and his evaluation would not be handed in.
The commission is provisionally scheduled to meet again on October 18 to hear testimony from German boxing promoter Wilfred Sauerland, who reportedly donated R49 825 to Morkel earlier this year to pay his rent.
Desai set an October 31 deadline for written submissions from the lawyers involved in the hearings, saying November had been set aside for finalising the commission’s report.
The report would be concluded no later than November 30, he said. – Sapa