Entertainer Taliep Petersen and his wife, Najwa, were involved in dodgy diamond and currency deals, the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court heard on Thursday.
One of these deals was in progress on the night he died, according to an affidavit handed in as evidence in Najwa’s second bail application, launched on the basis of ”new facts” after her first was rejected by both the regional and high courts.
Najwa told an attorney that she did not reveal to police that millions of rands in United States dollars were stolen from the couple’s bedside safe by the attackers that night.
In one of the affidavits handed up, Najwa’s 19-year-old son from a previous marriage, Sulaiman Effendi, said his mother and ”Uncle Taliep” were involved in transactions where diamonds and dollars were involved.
”I knew that Uncle Taliep’s money was at a stage paid in Namibia. My mother and Uncle Taliep would at a stage frequently go up to Namibia to get American dollars. My impression was that it was sold here at a profit.”
He said strong corroboration for the diamond dealing was provided by an entry in Taliep’s diary, which read: ”For three stones profit can be $2-million”.
Effendi said Faheem Hendricks, a former employee of Najwa’s family business Dirk Fruit, brought money to his mother on more than one occasion, and had been aware of large amounts of money held in the bedroom safe.
The reasons for a series of cellphone calls by Najwa to Hendricks in the hours before the killing was that he was providing progress reports on a valuable diamond transaction.
Effendi claimed Hendricks had arranged for the house to be robbed, and — in a sentence that magistrate Robert Henney said was inadmissible as opinion evidence — claimed Taliep opened a security gate to let the killers in when he saw Hendricks’s face on the intercom screen.
”My grandfather [businessman Suleiman Dirk, who died in a car accident this month] told me that he was one of the first in the bedroom with my mother after the incident,” Effendi said.
”He requested my mother not to say anything to the police regarding the dollars and he mentioned the word ‘money-laundering’ to me.”
According to the police, Hendricks, who is now in witness protection, recruited three hitmen, who are now Najwa’s co-accused, at her request.
A Cape Town attorney, Liz Hacking, said in an affidavit that during a consultation Najwa told her she had made ”two errors” in her disclosures to police.
”She then told me that the equivalent of millions of rands in US dollars were robbed from the safe on the night that Taliep was murdered.
”When I enquired from her what they did with the dollars she indicated to me that there was a market out there.”
Najwa also told Hacking that her calls to Hendricks on the night of the killing were connected with diamond deals.
”She had not informed the police of the dollars in the safe nor the nature of her telephone calls because her father had told her not to as he had felt that disclosing this information would lead the police to the diamond deals.”
Earlier, financial consultant Rafiq Saville told the court it was not correct that Najwa was the beneficiary of Taliep’s R5,3-million life policy, that it was taken out only months before his death, or that she had pestered insurers Liberty Life to pay up after his death.
It was in fact at Najwa’s insistence that the couple’s seven-year-old daughter Zaynab was made sole beneficiary, rather than Najwa herself.
The application was postponed to October 31. — Sapa