People are demanding to know why the state let former police commissioner Jackie Selebi’s legal bill climb to more than R17.4 million.
Selebi was in a stable condition in the Jakaranda Hospital in Pretoria yesterday, after collapsing on Friday when he heard the Supreme Court of Appeal had turned down his appeal on his corruption conviction and that he would have to report to the Johannesburg Prison, near Sandton, within 48 hours to serve a 15-year sentence.
Selebi had possibly suffered a stroke. “His left side of his body has collapsed. It is completely numb. He has kidney problems and he has high blood pressure,” a reliable source said.
With Selebi in hospital, Correctional Services has adopted a wait-and-see attitude. “If he does not report (tomorrow) we will visit to satisfy ourselves that he is not intentionally preventing himself from being handed over to start serving his sentence,” said a senior official.
The Supreme Court of Appeal found that the South Gauteng High Court was correct in ruling that Selebi had received payments from convicted drug trafficker Glenn Agliotti. He was convicted of corruption and handed a 15-year jail sentence last year.
Despite concerns about Selebi’s health which, according to those close to him, has been deteriorating for some time, the state has started a process of reclaiming money.
“We are going to start calculating the amount owed and communicate with Selebi through his lawyers,” said Justice Department spokesman Tlali Tlali. If Selebi is unable to repay the fees, the state will “follow normal debt recovery processes”.
The DA’s Dianne Kohler Barnard yesterday said the situation was “outrageous”, pointing out the state had tried to extend Selebi’s contract after he was suspended and charged, but that he had chosen to resign after two months.
“They (the state) still carried on paying (his legal fees),” she said. “I would have thought that in terms of the justice system that it is illegal.”
The State Attorney’s office had referred Selebi’s defence to Wynanda Coetzee at a Centurion-based law firm and advocate Jaap Cilliers, SC, the man who had defended apartheid chemical weapons expert Wouter Basson.
“It was not his choice that an outside party was appointed to represent him. If the State Attorney had taken his case like they should have, there would not have been any legal expenses,” said an insider.
Selebi had asked the state to assist him in carrying the cost of his legal fees during his corruption trial, agreeing at a pre-trial meeting with the state to pay back all costs if he lost his case.
Kohler Barnard said Selebi did not have the kind of money the state wanted him to repay. She questioned whether the state would claim his pension. “Was he given a special pension because of his ANC past?”
Those close to Selebi said even if the state sold his house “and left his wife and kids on the street” the proceeds would not settle the debt.
Coetzee said Selebi would report to prison “even if sick” and had to spend time in a prison hospital, but his legal team was negotiating with the National Prosecuting Authority “on how things will work”.
A battery of tests has been done on Selebi, but the results are not yet known. Only his wife was allowed to visit him until late yesterday.
Patrick Craven, spokesman for Cosatu, said it was regrettable that “a man with such an impeccable struggle record” would spend 15 years in jail for accepting R166 000, “a small sum compared to the amounts others are looting from the state” through tender fraud.
“Let’s hope this is the first of many such prosecutions,” he said, adding that he believed the cost to society would have been far greater had Selebi not been prosecuted.
Constitutional expert Pierre de Vos pointed out on his weekly blog that Selebi’s appeal did not deal with constitutional issues, which would make an appeal to the Constitutional Court difficult.
“There might be good reasons the Scorpions went after Selebi and in effect let Agliotti off the hook. But it does leave a bad aftertaste that Selebi is going to jail while Agliotti is a free man,” said De Vos.
The IFP’s Velaphi Ndlovu said Selebi’s sentence sent a message to society that even those close to political power would be prosecuted if found to be corrupt. - Sunday Tribune