Johannesburg - Three of the criminal cases against forensic consultant Paul O’Sullivan have been set down to continue this month, after the kidnapping, extortion and fraud matter was on Thursday postponed for a trial date to be set.
O’Sullivan and former colleague Melissa Naidu have been charged with allegedly kidnapping and threatening complainant Cora van der Merwe in October 2014.
“I surmised he was a policeman. He said if I didn’t come with him, I would spend the night in jail and there was a possibility I wouldn’t see my children again,” Van der Merwe wrote in her affidavit.
She was employed at embattled law firm Ronald Bobroff and Partners and was one of the first to allege that the firm was overcharging its clients and defrauding the Road Accident Fund. Bobroff, his son and daughter-in-law have since fled South Africa after an investigation showed they had seemingly defrauded their clients of millions of rand.
It was alleged that Naidu and O’Sullivan were investigating who had leaked the information, and Van der Merwe had allegedly been forced to accompany the pair to their offices.
During the drive, Van der Merwe claimed she had begged her lawyer for help in text messages after allegedly being abducted by the investigators.
On Thursday, at the Randburg Magistrate’s Court, O’Sullivan and Naidu’s case was postponed to September 30 to assign a trial date and allow all parties the opportunity to submit written representations.
Meanwhile, on the same date, O’Sullivan will be appearing at the same court for another fraud matter, in which Alice Johnston, the former lover of the man who claims he was tricked into funding mining magnate Brett Kebble’s murder, is the complainant.
Johnston has said she was the mistress of James Murray, the Joburg businessman who claimed he had no idea he’d paid back a R1 million debt that would later be used to fund Kebble’s killing. While Johnston was being investigated in a separate alleged plot to murder Murray, she called on O’Sullivan to assist.
She claims that he allegedly interrogated, intimidated and threatened her.
O’Sullivan is also on trial at the Kempton Park Magistrate’s Court after he was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport in April for breaching the Citizenship Act, after using his foreign passports to travel outside the country even though he is also a South African citizen.
The Star