Seven former British American Tobacco employees face racketeering charges if National Director of Public Prosecutions Menzi Simelane grants the go-ahead to amend theft charges against them, the Weekend Argus newspaper reported on Saturday.
The former employees, Pienaar van Heerden and his wife, Anthea, John van der Vent, John van Rooy, Phillip Gorden Heynes, Reginald Fisher and Terrence Keyster, appeared briefly in the Cape Town Magistrate's Court on Friday where they are currently charged with stealing more than R6.9 million in cigarette shipments.
When they appeared in court, it emerged that the State was applying to amend the charges to more serious counts of racketeering under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act.
The syndicate’s operations allegedly included the theft of about 590 boxes of cigarettes, mostly Peter Stuyvesant, intercepted while being shipped from the Gauteng plant to the firm’s laboratory in Stellenbosch to undergo quality testing.
Prosecutor Mzukizi Mazandwa asked on Friday that the case be postponed to allow the State to get necessary authorisation from Simelane.
Mike Loftus, who appeared on behalf of three of the accused – the Van Heerden couple and Van der Vent – said the State had already had more than three months to prepare.
Mazandwa then asked that documents seized at the homes of the accused during their arrests be unsealed to allow investigators to peruse and copy them.
The legal representatives for the accused objected to the State’s request.
Loftus described the State’s move to unseal the seized documents as a “blindside”.
He added that he had no objections to a postponement as long as it was marked final.
Magistrate Jasthree Steyn granted the postponement but denied the requests to unseal documents or to amend the bail conditions, saying that the defence did not have any time to receive instructions from their clients.
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