Tigon: Admissions and reduced charges on the cards

Tigon-accused Sue Bennett has until Monday to respond to a request from trial judge Brian Spilg that she put any admissions she is prepared to make on the table.

Bennett and Gary Porritt are standing trial in the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg on more than 3 000 counts of fraud, racketeering and contraventions of the Income Tax Act and the Prevention of Organised Crime Act. 

The charges relate to the collapse of then JSE listed financial services group Tigon around 2002. Porritt was CEO and Bennett a director.

The pair were arrested in 2002 and 2003 respectively, but the trial only started late in 2016 due to numerous applications and appeals the accused brought in an apparent effort to delay the proceedings.

When the trial eventually started, progress was extremely slow, initially because the unrepresented Porritt was making notes at a snail’s pace. Later it was interrupted by investigations into first Bennett and then Porritt’s fitness to stand trial after they on different occasions failed to present themselves at court, pleading ill health.

Porritt and Bennett both represent themselves, claiming they don’t have money for legal representation. The state has disputed this and has accused the pair of using legal representation, or the lack thereof, as a legal strategy. The fact that they are lay people has caused the court to give them much more leeway than trained lawyers would ever get and has played a big role in the slow progress.

The investigation into Bennett’s health was suspended, but that of Porritt resulted in the final withdrawal of his bail. He has been incarcerated since June 2017 and late last year lost an appeal to a full bench of the High Court against the withdrawal of his bail.

Read: Tigon judge cuts through Porritt’s excuses 

The state’s first witness, Jack Milne, is currently being cross-examined by Bennett. Milne was CEO of Progressive Systems College (PSC) and the face of Progressive Systems College Guaranteed Growth (PSCGG), an investment fund underwritten by Tigon.

Milne, who earlier served a jail sentence after admitting fraud related to PSCGG, earlier testified that he conspired with Porritt and Bennett to defraud investors from the inception of PSCGG. They have both denied this.

Read: Milne totally misled us – Porritt 

In December last year, before the start of the court recess, Spilg asked the state to consider reducing the number of charges. He also asked the accused to consider, based on the evidence led and their defence, whether they could make any admissions.

This was an apparent effort to speed up the trial.

On Monday morning the trial resumed with Spilg asking Porritt whether he is ready to respond to the court’s request about admissions.

Porritt indicated that he would not respond.

Bennett said she would consider making admissions, but needed to consult with Porritt, which is very difficult to do while he is incarcerated.

Spilg then called for an adjournment until shortly before lunch to allow the two accused to discuss the matter.

When the trial resumed, Bennett indicated that she needed time to go through the record and would be able to make admissions after the end of April.

Spilg refused that and gave her a week to consider what she is prepared to admit to.

He said Bennett got the documents she was entitled to before she pleaded at the beginning of the trial. “I am not prepared to carry on in this [slow] manner,” Spilg told Bennett.

He said he had also asked the state to consider reducing the charges. “I am only prepared to work efficiently with your cooperation, which I haven’t received,” he told Bennett.

Lead prosecutor advocate Etienne Coetzee SC told Spilg that the state is well aware of the magnitude of the charges against Porritt and Bennett. He said the state is constantly evaluating the charges, but the number of disputes is not being limited.

Coetzee said the state will see what admissions are being made and will consider the testimony of the next witness – forensic expert professor Harvey Wainer of the University of the Witswatersrand – to determine what is still in dispute. Only then will the state consider reducing the charges.

 The case was postponed until February 4.