Alleged coup financier Mark Thatcher will pay his bail by the end of the week, his lawyer said on Wednesday, but declined to comment on a report that his mother, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, is posting the money for her son.
Thatcher (51) is under house arrest at his Cape Town home after being charged last Wednesday with bankrolling an alleged coup plot in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea.
A Cape Town court set bail at R2-million and fixed November 25 as the date for the next court appearance.
Thatcher’s lawyer, Ron Wheeldon, said the money, which he described as a “surety” and not bail, will be paid by the weekend.
Thatcher, a businessman, was released after his lawyers assured the court he would post bail by September 8 but was asked to surrender his passport and any air tickets in his possession.
A report in the London newspaper The Times said on Wednesday that Margaret Thatcher will post the bail, but Wheeldon refused comment, saying: “I don’t know anything about that.”
The Times said “the money will be paid within 36 hours”.
Wheeldon also refused to comment on reports that Mark Thatcher is strapped for cash.
Thatcher is due in court in South Africa in November to answer charges that he paid $275Â 000 to Simon Mann, the alleged British mastermind of the coup.
On Friday, Mann — the founder of mercenary firm Executive Outcomes — was convicted in Zimbabwe of trying to illegally buy weapons for the suspected plotters.
But a trial of other alleged mercenaries in Equatorial Guinea was indefinitely postponed on Tuesday due to new developments such as Thatcher’s arrest.
South African officials are currently examining a request from Equatorial Guinea to question Thatcher.
His lawyer said: “To do that they would have to come up with some sort of charge.”
He dismissed reports of Thatcher’s supposed role in the putsch plot as “complete and utter nonsense”.
Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema says the plan was to oust him and install an opposition leader living in Spanish exile. He alleges the plot was backed by foreign financiers who hoped to gain control of his country’s vast oil wealth. — Sapa-AFP
Margaret Thatcher posts bail for Mark