Cape Town - A former Hawks police captain who demanded R500 from a victim of the so-called “black dollar scam”, launched an application on Thursday for leave to appeal his 10-year prison sentence.
Siyaza Patrick Siyale was sentenced in April to six years on a charge of extortion, two for theft and two for defeating the administration of justice.
He appeared in the Bellville Specialised Commercial Crime Court before Magistrate Sabrina Sonnenberg, who ruled in April that the three sentences would not run concurrently.
In Thursday’s proceedings, the magistrate said she would give judgment in the appeal application on Friday afternoon.
Siyale was attached to the Commercial Crime Unit in Cape Town.
His partner in commercial crime investigations, Wilfred Mentoor, 30, a detective constable, was effectively jailed for eight months only, after which he will be released into correctional supervision involving house arrest, as suggested by his then legal aid defence lawyer, Hayley Lawrence.
Siyale’s lawyers in Thursday’s proceedings, advocate Leon Fielies and attorney John Kiewiets, claimed the 10-year jail sentence was so inappropriate for Siyale’s circumstances, as to induce a sense of shock.
They launched the application for leave to appeal the three convictions as well as the sentences, on the grounds that the High Court was likely to reach conclusions different to that of the Specialised Commercial Crime Court.
The case was a sequel to the involvement of victim Nicodemus Solly Moeng, in the black dollar scam in August 2011.
At the time, Moeng was the president of the French South Africa Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
A bogus Congolese investor, David Kilato, had duped Moeng into parting with R300 000 for a “lucrative investment”.
Moeng received four small lock-up safes, supposedly filled with US dollars, but in fact containing black pieces of paper cut to the size of US dollars.
On his way home with the safes, Moeng was intercepted by Siyale and Mentoor, who accused Moeng of involvement in the scam.
Siyale demanded money in order not to arrest him.
At Moeng’s home, they confiscated the safes, a camera and a book, and Siyale removed R400 from Moeng’s wallet, to “split” with Mentoor.
Moeng reported the incident and an undercover police “sting” was set up to trap Siyale.
In the course of the trap, Siyale accepted R500 from Moeng at a take-away restaurant and was arrested.
Prosecutor Denzyl Combrink countered that the court had not misdirected itself in regard to the convictions and sentences, and that it would not be in the interests of justice to grant the application.
He said the defence, in papers before the court, had made “numerous baseless assertions”.
Siyales sentences were based on the fact that he had played a leading role in the saga, and had demanded money from Moeng instead of protecting him as a victim in the scam, Combrink said.
ANA