Lies, and lies within lies, were the topic of the day as the LeisureNet trial entered its second week in the Cape High Court on Monday.
The liquidated group’s former in-house architect Dawid Rabie was being cross-examined on his evidence that joint chief executives Peter Gardener and Rodney Mitchell pressured him into handing over $254 000 in kickbacks on payments LeisureNet made to him.
”Are you an accomplished liar, Mr Rabie?” defence advocate Francois van Zyl asked him towards the end of the day.
”Mr Van Zyl, I don’t know if anyone can answer that question,” growled acting judge Dirk Uijs.
Rabie had testified earlier that he and Mitchell, who along with Gardener face charges of fraud and theft worth R16-million, cooked up a story about the kickbacks to mislead the statutory Companies Act inquiry held after Leisurenet collapsed in 2000.
He told Van Zyl, who acts for Mitchell and Gardener, he had suggested to the other two that they say the money was still his, and that he had merely entrusted it to them to invest it on his behalf in property developments.
Van Zyl questioned him closely on which parts of his testimony to the inquiry were true and which were false.
Several times Rabie asked him to repeat questions, and several times hesitated before answering. During one wait for a reply, Uijs put it on the record that there was ”a long silence”.
Pressed on his statement to the inquiry that he had been involved in a dispute with Gardener over foreign exchange losses, Rabie exclaimed: ”The whole story is a lie. This is just another lie inside the lie.”
But later, also on the foreign exchange issue, he said: ”In this lie it was the truth.”
Uijs, trying to grasp Rabie’s explanations, paraphrased Walter Scott: ”Oh what a web we weave…”
”When we practice to deceive,” said Rabie, completing the quotation.
At the beginning of his testimony on Monday, Rabie referred to an exchange last week, when he answered ”yes” to a question from Van Zyl on whether South African Revenue Service investigator Rory Cohen had at one point threatened to arrest his wife.
He explained that Cohen, a member of the prosecution team, never made a verbal threat, but that he and his wife had perceived a threat.
On trial with Gardener and Mitchell are their business associate Hans Moser, and Mitchell’s wife Suzanne.
Gardener and Mitchell face charges of fraud, money-laundering, income tax evasion and contraventions of the Companies Act, involving R16-million.
Moser and Mrs Mitchell face money-laundering charges only. – Sapa