Bluff security company owner Adriaan Snyman, whose company recently provided security for ANC Youth League president Julius Malema, appeared in court yesterday in connection with planning a multimillion-rand heist.
Snyman, who is out on bail, owns security company Tactical Security Services, which provided heavily armed bodyguards for Malema when he attended his hate-speech case in the Equality Court in Joburg earlier this year.
According to Tactical Security Services’ website, the company was started in October 2008, and its guards are all highly trained ex-police and military personnel.
The trial of Snyman and his co-accused, Jaco Botes and Vickers van Vuuren, is part-heard before Durban Regional Court magistrate Fariedha Mohamed.
All three have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit theft.
According to the charge sheet, Snyman and Botes were employed by cash transport company SBV Security Services in 2007. Van Vuuren and Christiaan van Zyl, who has turned State witness, were police officers at Brighton Beach police station.
The charge sheet states that they conspired to stage a robbery of one of SBV’s delivery trucks to steal the cash for themselves.
However, Van Zyl told SBV of the plot and Snyman, Botes and Van Vuuren were arrested in 2007. Yesterday, the trial could not proceed because the prosecutor was ill.
The court was told that another prosecutor would be assigned.
The case was adjourned to August for transcripts of the trial so far to be compiled. – The Mercury