Cape Town – The trial of suspended police captain Paul Scheepers, on multiple fraud charges, was to have commenced on Tuesday, but was instead postponed to October, to give the prosecuting authorities time to consider a last-ditch defence application for the withdrawal of the charges.
Two senior State advocates, Thersia du Toit-Smit and Max Orban, are to prosecute 45-year-old Scheepers, on 23 fraud charges, as well as one alleged contravention of the Private Security Industry Act, one violation of the Regulation of Interception of Communications Act and one relating to the Prevention of Organised Crime Act (Poca).
If Scheepers is able to meet his financial commitments, the two State advocates will be pitched against senior defence counsel Craig Webster and attorney John Riley, when the case starts on October 9.
By the time the case starts in October, Scheepers has to have met his defence financial commitments in full. At Tuesday’s proceedings, in the Specialised Commercial Crime Court in Bellville, before magistrate Sabrina Sonnenberg, the prosecution team said they were ready to proceed with the matter.
They gave formal notification to the defence that the State would bring an application on October 9, for an order that the trial commence forthwith – with or without legal representations – if the defence requested yet another postponement.
Du Toit-Smit told the court that there had been a “long series of postponements”, and that Scheepers had, in addition, been absent from the proceedings four times, since his arrest in May, 2015.
“There have been numerous postponements for medical reasons, and others for the outcome of a High Court matter, one for written representations that did not materialise, for the withdrawal of the charges, and one for financial reasons.”
All the postponements had been orchestrated by Scheepers, to prevent the commencement of his trial, she alleged. Scheepers, who is out on R20 000 bail, was attached to the police’s Crime Intelligence Unit, but also ran his own private detective agency, Eagle Eye Solutions Technology.
Cellphone service providers such as MTN and Vodacom may not provide the police with the records of cellphone calls made and received, for criminal investigations, without a subpoena, signed by a senior magistrate and the prosecuting authorities. In order to obtain a subpoena, an investigating official has to submit a sworn affidavit, giving details of the particular investigation, the numbers of the cellphones involved and the reason the cellphone records were required.
It is alleged that Scheepers fraudulently included the numbers of cellphones under private investigation by his own detective agency.