The fraud trial of former national fast bowler Garth le Roux and his accountant began in Cape Town’s Wynberg Regional Court on Monday with a claim that he was being prosecuted maliciously.
In a plea explanation read into the record by his advocate, Wim Trengove, Le Roux said he had already settled most of the tax issues in the case with the South African Revenue Service (Sars).
”It has become clear over time that this prosecution is being recklessly and vindictively driven,” Le Roux said.
”The main culprit seems to be the investigating officer and principal state witness, Mr Lorenzo van Vuuren.”
Le Roux and accountant Gideon van Heerden have pleaded not guilty to 48 charges of fraud, alternatively theft or contravention of tax laws, involving millions of rands.
Van Heerden, who was until February 2001 also financial manager of Fancourt’s development division, pleaded not guilty to one charge of contravening exchange-control regulations.
Named as co-accused on the charge sheet are three businesses in which Le Roux has an interest.
The charges stem from a Sars probe into Le Roux’s activities as sales agent for properties on the prestigious Fancourt golf estate in George, a probe in which investigators amassed about 12 000 pages of documentation.
The state claims he and Van Heerden furnished false income-tax and VAT returns; that they set off commission earned by one of the businesses, Garth le Roux Marketime, against the purchase of a Fancourt property and links membership fees; and that they doubled-claimed the R112 000 commission on one property from Fancourt.
Le Roux, who still sports his trademark blond moustache, said in his plea explanation that he had acted in good faith at all times.
”I never deliberately withheld or distorted the truth,” he said.
He had taken ”exhaustive” expert advice on the treatment of the tax issues in the case, and had been told that it was ”entirely lawful and proper as I had always believed it to be”.
Le Roux also denied charges that he defrauded or stole money from Plattner Golf, the company that runs Fancourt.
He said Plattner had never accused him of these crimes, and he challenged the state to name the complainant in respect of these charges.
It also emerged on Monday outside the courtroom that the allegations of malicious prosecution have been the subject of at least one meeting and written exchanges between the defence teams and the Cape Town office of the director of public prosecutions.
In a letter sent to the office on Sunday, Van Heerden’s attorney complained that both men had been ”severely embarrassed and inconvenienced” by the state’s conduct in the case, in which, she said, an extensive prosecution had been launched ”merely on the conclusions and deductions drawn by the investigating officer”.
Though Van Vuuren took the stand as the state’s first witness in mid-morning on Monday, much of the day was spent handing in and recording uncontested documentary evidence from Sars files, including tax returns.
Van Heerden learned shortly before the lunch break that his mother had died during the morning, and after a brief adjournment was excused from the rest of the day’s proceedings.
The trial continues on Tuesday. — Sapa