State seeks clarity on Oscar donations

Prosecutor Gerrie Nel questioned Petrus van Zyl in the High Court in Pretoria about an instance he mentioned where Pistorius donated his own funds to charity.

He said Pistorius was requested to speak at an event and organisers said they would donate R20,000 to a charity of the athlete’s choice.

Van Zyl explained that he spoke to the organisers on the phone and told them Pistorius agreed to speak at the event but wanted the money to be donated.

“This is money that Mr Pistorius earned and he donated it,” he said.

“There are other instances that Mr Pistorius made available his own funds.”

Nel questioned him to get clarity on what he meant with “own funds”.

“This is what you mean with own funds, it’s not that he dug into his own savings?”

As Nel questioned Van Zyl, Pistorius’s psychologist Lore Hartzenberg sat next to the athlete’s sister Aimee and uncle Arnold shaking her head.

The court heard that Van Zyl’s other clients also did charity work and that it was normal for celebrities and athlete’s to work with charities.

He said he previously combined the athlete’s charity work with business.

“I saw the opportunity where I could combine charity work and business and I structured a deal for Mr Pistorius,” Van Zyl said.

Van Zyl told the court on Monday that Pistorius used his own funds for charity.

On September 12 Pistorius was found guilty of the culpable homicide of his girlfriend, model and law graduate Reeva Steenkamp, but not guilty of her murder.

Pistorius had claimed he thought there was a burglar in his toilet when he fired four shots through the locked door in the early hours of February 14 last year, killing Steenkamp. The State had argued he killed her during an argument.

Judge Thokozile Masipa also found Pistorius guilty of discharging firearm in public, when he shot from his friend Darren Fresco’s Glock pistol under a table at Tasha’s restaurant in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg, in January 2013.

Pistorius was found not guilty on two firearms-related charges – illegal possession of ammunition, and shooting through the open sunroof of a car with his 9mm pistol while driving with friends in Modderfontein on September 30, 2012.

– Sapa

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