The Durban High Court has dismissed a bid by arms company Thint for further particulars on the corruption charges it is to face alongside former deputy president Jacob Zuma.
”I can confirm that the application has been refused,” prosecuting advocate Anton Steynberg said on Monday.
However, Thint attorney Ajay Sooklal said the court’s decision merely amounts to a ”postponement of the matter”.
”There is no winner and there is no loser,” Sooklal said.
In his judgement on Monday, Judge Phillip Levinsohn agreed with the state that while it could furnish further particulars on the existing indictment, this would be futile as it intends replacing the indictment altogether.
”I agree with counsel for the state that no useful purpose will be served by having detailed further particulars to the provisional indictment which would in many respects be replaced by new facts … arising from the aforesaid expanded investigations.
”I also agree with the submission that having as it were two sets of further particulars could be the source of … confusion and indeed unnecessary contradiction.
”When the fresh indictment is served all the accused will be in a position to request further particulars thereto and the state will then be in a position to furnish a meaningful and relevant response,” Levinsohn found.
”I am not disposed to make any order on the application before me.
”I am not called upon to speculate what the outcome of the state’s delay in formulating the revised indictment will be and what effect … it would have on the continuation of the trial set down at the end of July 2006.
”These are matters which no doubt will exercise the mind of the judge who is assigned to hear the trial.”
The application for further particulars was brought by Thint and Thint Holdings, accused numbers two and three in the pending corruption trial in which Zuma is accused number one. He was listed as an interested party in the application.
The state contended it could only finalise the indictment on the completion of litigation brought by the applicants contesting the legality of search warrants used to obtain evidence in the case.
It needed clarity on what evidence it could rely on.
Denying that it was drawing out the legal process, the state explained that its investigation, which started in 2000, was only broadened to include Zuma in October 2002, with some offences alleged to have continued until ”at least 2005”.
Provisional indictments have been served on Thint and Zuma.
Zuma, who was acquitted of rape last week, has been charged after a high court finding that he had a ”generally corrupt” relationship with his former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik.
It was this finding that led to Zuma’s dismissal as deputy president by President Thabo Mbeki.
Shaik was convicted of fraud and corruption, but is taking the ruling on appeal.
The two Thint companies are South African subsidiaries of French arms dealer Thales, and stand accused of offering Zuma a R500 000-a-year bribe in exchange for his silence during a probe into South Africa’s multibillion-rand arms-acquisition programme.