Former president Jacob Zuma and French arms company Thales will today find out whether their long-delayed corruption trial will proceed.
The Pietermaritzburg High Court is expected to hand down judgment on Wednesday on their application for leave to appeal the court’s earlier decision dismissing their application to have the charges dropped.
Judgement
In December last year, Judge Nkosinathi Chili reserved judgment on the duo’s latest attempt to have their corruption charges withdrawn.
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Application
Zuma and Thales applied to be summarily acquitted of the arms deal corruption and racketeering charges on the basis that unreasonable delays had resulted in the deaths of crucial witnesses, Thales representative Alain Thétard and Pierre Moynot.
In court papers, Thales’ attorney Cameron Dunstan-Smith said the company pleaded not guilty to all the charges against it in May 2021 and that the case was postponed 16 times due to “no fault of its own”.
Thales
During Thales’ arguments, advocate Barry Roux, representing the French arms company, stated that no witnesses could give evidence in Thales’ defence because the officials who could have testified “are now dead.”
The former president’s lawyer, Advocate Naba Buthelezi, argued that the state “no longer had a winnable case” against Zuma because so many allegedly crucial witnesses had died.
However, the State argued that Zuma’s attempt to rely on the deaths of Moynot and Thétard to seek an order quashing his prosecution on the basis that he can no longer adduce or challenge their evidence is “fatally undermined” by a pivotal point he was allegedly personally involved in the corruption he stands accused of.
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Arms deal
The arms deal case was declared trial-ready three years ago but has been delayed by Zuma’s repeated failed efforts to force the removal of his arms deal prosecutor, Billy Downer, as part of his Stalingrad strategy.
The 81-year-old Zuma and Thales are facing multiple charges, including fraud, corruption, money laundering, and racketeering, in connection with the controversial multibillion-rand arms deal procured in the late 1990s while he was vice president.
It is the state’s case that Zuma was kept on a corrupt retainer by his former financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, who then allegedly used his political clout to further his own business interests.
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