Durban - The “black book” – which the State alleges Durban businessman Grant Jones was almost killed for – never existed.
This is according to counsel representing Jones’s former business partner and the alleged mastermind behind his murder plot, Dain Neveling.
Neveling was applying for bail in the Durban Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday.
The State is opposing bail and, acting for Neveling, advocate Christo van Schalkwyk was cross-examining State witness and investigating officer, Detective Sergeant Deena Govender, of the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit.
Van Schalkwyk on Tuesday told the court the book – which the State said had since gone missing – was said to have been a debt book containing the details of people who were in debt and was sold to someone else to recover the money owed, along with additional money which he or she could keep.
But, Van Schalkwyk went on, this information was contained in files kept at his client’s house.
“Why would you kill for information you already had access to?” he asked.
He put it to Govender that there never was a black book.
Govender, however, remained adamant there was a book and that in it were the details of creditors not mentioned in the files at Neveling’s house.
Jones was shot five times in July, in what initially looked like a botched hijacking.
Neveling, as well as Johannes Hendrik Nunez and Christian Jorgen Jorgensen, were later arrested after an authorised trap laid out by Govender and his team.
Neveling allegedly hired Nunez and Jorgensen to kill Jones, so he could obtain the debt book and claim a multimillion-rand insurance payout.
Charges against Neveling were dropped, but were reinstated late last year, after Nunez and Jorgensen pleaded guilty and implicated him.
His bail application continues.
Daily News