Entrepreneur Dave King’s claims that South Africa had impoverished him by freezing his assets and that he could not afford legal representation was ”all nonsense”, the Pretoria High Court heard on Thursday.
Prosecutor John Myburgh tackled King and his legal team for painting a picture of a poor, impoverished man whose rights were being trampled on, while in truth funds for legal representation had never been denied to him.
King maintained a lavish lifestyle spending over R2,4-million per month and he clearly had other sources of income, which the state had not yet been able to trace, said Myburgh.
He also accused King of using the restraint order against his assets that were obtained in courts in South Africa, Britain, Scotland and Guernsey as a device to avoid proceeding with his criminal trial.
He said the court orders acknowledged that King was entitled to living and legal expenses, but King and his attorneys had taken no steps since June 6 to access funds in England and Guernsey, rather choosing to fight the terms of some of the orders in the courts.
King was also in contempt of an English court order, forcing him to reveal his assets worldwide. Myburgh claimed this was because King ”had something to hide” and wanted to avoid disclosing further sources of income and, the state presumed, avoid providing ”further evidence of money laundering”.
He said the state had evidence that King had other sources of income and it was not mere speculation. King had a bank account in England, his trustees had told a court under oath he had ”other assets” and R160-million of the R1-billion that left the country between 1998 and 1999 from the sale of shares in a local company went to unknown offshore destinations.
In addition, an amount of £180 000 had been paid into King’s American Express card, indicating there was a source of income elsewhere.
Myburgh pointed out that the purpose of restraint orders was to preserve assets that were alleged to be the proceeds of crime for ultimate confiscation.
”We believe we will prove if not all of the 322 charges, then at least 300 of fraud, tax evasion, exchange control regulation violations, money laundering and racketeering against him,” he added.
Myburgh said the state could already prove that King had committed fraud on a number of occasions over an extended period of time. Fifteen of these alleged cases of fraud involved amounts in excess of R500 000, attracting a minimum period of 15 years imprisonment on each count.
According to Myburgh, King had no defence against these charges.
The prosecutor pointed out that King’s major source of wealth had been the sale of shares in the company Specialised Outsourcing for a profit of over R1,2-billion, which left the country without the knowledge or permission of the Treasury, yet neither he nor his ”alter ego”, the company Ben Nevis, ever disclosed those profits in their tax returns.
King maintained Ben Nevis was a foreign company and did not need any approval.
According to Myburgh, having externalised his wealth, King then arranged for ”alter ego entities” offshore to transfer millions of rand back to South Africa to finance his lavish lifestyle, which included multimillion-rand properties in Sandhurst and Plettenberg Bay, a Ferrari worth R2,1-million, two aircraft, and spending over R18,5-million in one year on antiques, paintings, furniture and motor vehicles — a ”classic case of money laundering”.
His living and property expenses alone came to more than R2,4-million per month, apart from vast amounts of money poured into wine and stud farms, yet King had told the South African taxman three years running that he only earned R60 000 per year and had only managed to accumulate assets worth R250 000 in his 23 years in the country.
He stated that he was not the beneficiary of any trust funds, yet in court claimed being the beneficiary in a trust in Guernsey.
”The picture the accused painted for Sars [South African Revenue Service] in his tax returns was of a man earning a modest income. The reality was completely different. He’d made profits of hundreds of millions of rands and spent millions on luxury homes, vehicles, etc,” Myburgh said.
King’s senior advocate, Bobby Levine, earlier argued that the state was denying King access to funds for his defence in the criminal trial. He said the case should not be allowed to go ahead unless the state cooperated by making funds available for his defence.
The case continues on August 8. – Sapa