Bail for Krejcir crony, court finds the case against him on shaky ground

Almost six years after it got underway, there is still no end in sight in the trial of Czech crime boss Radovan Krejcir and the three men whose services he allegedly had enlisted to kill Lebanese businessman and alleged drug dealer Sam Issa – with the state yet to close its case.

And Acting Judge Stuart Wilson of the High Court in Johannesburg honed in on the drawn-out prosecution this week when he granted one of Krejcir’s co-accused, Nkanyiso Mafunda, bail – finding all these years down the line that the case against him appeared on shaky ground.

Issa was gunned down in Bedfordview in the early hours of the morning of Saturday 12 October, 2013. Krejcir had borrowed R500 000 from him and had allegedly arranged for his assassination to get out of having to pay him back.

The accused made their first appearance in the dock for Issa’s murder in February 2015 and the trial got underway in April 2016. After initially having opted out of applying for bail, Mafunda only recently changed his mind.

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In granting his application on Monday, Wilson said Mafunda’s alleged role in Issa’s murder was “far from clear” and that neither the state’s papers, the evidence of the investigating officer, the indictment nor the transcript of the trial proceedings thus far shed any light on it.

“I hesitate to draw any definite inferences about the extent of Mr Mafunda’s role in the offences charged from very short passages of evidence placed before me after having been extracted from a 10 000-page record. But what strikes me is the absence of any cogent account, in the transcript, in the state’s indictment, in the state’s opposing affidavits or in the evidence of [the investigating officer] of the precise role Mr Mafunda is alleged to have played in the conspiracy or the murder,” he said.

When it came to the delays in the trial, the state had put the blame at the feet of Mafunda and his co-accused – citing “frivolous” applications they had brought and suggesting Mafunda contributed directly by changing counsel midway through the case.

“There does not seem to be any real dispute that Mr Mafunda had to change his counsel because the advocate he initially briefed died during the trial. It seems inappropriate to hold that against him. The information necessary to draw any other definite conclusions about the causes of delay at the trial has not been placed before me. I can make no findings in that regard,” Wilson found.

“Was there really a strong case against Mr Mafunda, the state should have had no difficulty in presenting that case clearly, convincingly and concisely,” he said.

“As I have already concluded, that has not been done. It is obviously unfortunate that, after five years and 10 000 pages of evidence, no one was able to tell me precisely what Mr Mafunda’s involvement in the crimes allegedly had been,” Wilson said.

He said the “contrast between the tenuousness of the state’s evidence and the vehemence of its opposition to Mafunda’s application” left him “with a profound sense of unease”.

“Either there are sound reasons to refuse bail – but the state’s case has been so ineptly advanced that they have not been proved before me – or there really is something to Mr Mafunda’s apparently fantastical allegations of a police conspiracy against him,” Wilson said.

“I find neither prospect particularly edifying, but the bottom line is that I am not satisfied [with the state’s case]. Mafunda was granted bail of R20 000.

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za