More than 60 witnesses are expected to be called by the prosecution in the corruption trial of politicians Peter Marais and David Malatsi, which gets under way next week.
Senior Scorpions prosecutor Bruce Morrison said on Tuesday that the hearing is expected to start in earnest in the Regional Court in George on Monday November 17.
He has had no indication that the defence wants a postponement.
”Everybody is very positive about the fact that they would like the matter to proceed and be brought to finality as soon as possible,” he said.
Marais, who is currently leader of the New Labour Party and a former New National Party Western Cape premier, and Malatsi, his former provincial development planning minister, are on bail of R10 000 each after their arrest and several court appearances earlier this year.
Morrison said they will both face two charges of corruption relating to a total of R400 000 paid to the NNP in 2002 by the developer of Plettenberg Bay’s Roodefontein golf estate, Italian count Riccardo Agusta.
Agusta, who last month concluded a plea bargain agreement with the Scorpions to pay a R1-million fine for breaching the Corruption Act, has admitted to handing over the cash.
Although he had hoped in this way to ”promote” the province’s approval of the R500-million Roodefontein project, he was unaware that this constituted bribery, he said.
Just days after the payments were made, Malatsi’s department approved the golf estate in highly controversial circumstances.
Morrison said that in addition to the charges shared with Marais, Malatsi faces a third charge of corruption, the details of which he is not prepared to reveal at this stage, one of fraud, one of fraud with theft as an alternative, and two counts of theft.
Morrison said 16 witnesses from the George and Plettenberg Bay area are scheduled to testify during the two weeks that the hearing is scheduled to sit in George.
The remainder of the 62 people on his witness list will testify in Cape Town, where the hearing will move after the George witnesses are completed.
He said the decision to have split venues for the trial was based on the fact that it is cheaper and more practical to hear the evidence where the witnesses are than being them to Cape Town, and also makes site inspections easier.
”It’s a matter of rands and cents and practicality,” he said.
He expected the whole trial, to be heard by regional magistrate Andre le Grange, will take six or seven weeks to finalise.
Asked if Agusta himself will be called as a witness, Morrison declined to comment.
”You’ll have to guess, there,” he said.
Agusta’s October plea bargain includes a paragraph recording that the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions ”does not require [the count’s] further involvement in any way in any continuing or further prosecution or investigation concerning or arising from his relations with Marais and Malatsi”.
Morrison also declined to say who his first witness on Monday will be. — Sapa