Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown will be spending Human Rights Day behind bars after the Scorpions and his lawyers failed to agree on Tuesday on how his R1-million bail was to be paid.
He will be back in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on Thursday morning for what is expected to be an application for a change in bail conditions.
In granting Brown bail on Monday, Magistrate Eric Louw ruled that it could be paid in cash, or through a guarantee approved by the Scorpions.
Since then his lawyers have been battling to come up with a surety proposal acceptable to the unit.
The Scorpions on Monday rejected the offer of Brown’s luxury home at Sunset Beach in Cape Town as surety on the grounds that it was bought with the proceeds of crime.
They have also rejected a friend’s property as surety.
”They say there must be a link between the accused and the guarantee, and Mr Brown contends that is nonsense,” said Brown’s advocate, Klaus von Lieres.
”Regrettably he will have to stay in jail until Thursday, unless someone produces R1-million.”
The state intends to oppose any change in the bail ruling.
Brown’s co-accused, fellow Fidentia director Graham Maddock, was released from custody on Monday afternoon after paying R100 000 in cash and signing over a Cape Infanta property to the Scorpions as surety for the rest of his R1-million.
Brown and Maddock face fraud and theft charges involving just over R200-million allegedly misappropriated from the Transport Sector Education and Training Authority.
They are expected to face further charges related to the Living Hands Trust, which controlled money meant for mineworkers’ widows and orphans.
Brown is being held in Goodwood prison in Cape Town’s northern suburbs, not far from his Sunset Beach home.
Secret microphones
Last week it was reported the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court heard that three secret microphones and a hidden camera were discovered in Fidentia’s Cape Town boardroom in a sweep for electronic bugs after curators took over the business.
This emerged during the bail application by Brown and Maddock.
Scorpions lead investigator in the case Geoffrey Edwards told the court that the boardroom in which bugging equipment was found was used last year by a team from the Financial Services Board (FSB) when it conducted its own investigation into Fidentia.
He rejected a suggestion by advocate Von Lieres that the boardroom had just the normal video conferencing equipment installed in all 22 Fidentia boardrooms throughout the country.
He acknowledged that he never saw the equipment himself, and that he was testifying only on what he had heard.
Von Lieres read out parts of a letter from Fidentia’s lawyers to the FSB in August last year, in which they suggested that the FSB staff, who were suspicious at that stage that they were being monitored, had mistaken a DVD player in the boardroom for surveillance equipment, and were ”overzealous” in assuming they were being monitored.
Far from being surreptitious, the matter had been dealt with quite openly, Von Lieres said.
”I think we’re talking about two different things,” Edwards said.
In re-examination, prosecutor Bruce Morrison presented Edwards a report from a Pretoria-based firm, Computer Security and Forensic Solutions (CSFS), which said that during a search on February 6 this year, it found a covert camera as well as three covert microphones in the boardroom.
The output leads from the mikes led into a cupboard in the next room.
”The hidden camera and microphones were so covertly hidden that at no stage was any employee suppose[d] to observe or f[i]nd it,” the report said.
”A metal screw was screwed into the [cupboard] door from underneath so that nobody could open it easily after unlocking the cupboard.
”The conclusion we make is that this covert equipment installed must have been done with the assistance of an employee within the company.”
Asked by Morrison whether this appeared to have been standard equipment, Edwards replied: ”Definitely not.” — Sapa