Johannesburg - The man accused of working with a syndicate to try to defraud the Gautrain Management Agency (GMA) of R800 million has been denied bail.
The magistrate believes Aobakwe Israel Busang, 30, faces very serious charges, and the fact that he faces a lengthy prison time should he be convicted was enough to make him run for it and evade trial if granted bail.
“The evidence is reasonably strong to instil fear into the applicant and the temptation to evade trial is very strong. The court is of the opinion that the evidence before it is convincing,” magistrate Jerry Janse van Rensburg said on Thursday in the Johannesburg Commercial Crime Court.
It is alleged that Busang, a former IT technician at GMA, helped a syndicate hack into his employer’s system to try to defraud it of about R800m.
The State’s case was contained in a warning statement that Busang allegedly made after his arrest.Contained in the statement was also an elaborate explanation, allegedly by Busang, on why he gave the syndicate members access to the agency’s system and how he had done that.
However, Busang’s lawyer, Elspeth Khwinana, said on Thursday they denied the statement and its contents, and implied that the investigating officer could have made that all that up.
This was after Busang claimed the investigating officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Reynold Links, assaulted him and made him sign a blank document.
Janse van Rensburg was not convinced. The magistrate said he had looked at the statement and wondered where Links would have got “so much information”.
Busang is also accused of being part of a syndicate that defrauded Post Bank of R42m in January 2012.
He will be back in court on February 10.
The Star