A Dutch businessman accused of swindling a Mauritian bank of Rs20million has failed to convince the Cape Town high court to dismiss the charges against him.
South African media reported that Martin Korver, 55, faces charges ranging from theft to fraud and money laundering.
Korver allegedly duped the Mauritian bank (name retained) into giving him a loan using a four-star guest house in the Western Cape as security.
He is also accused of instructing a law firm to register a mortgage bond over the guest house in “favour of the Mauritian bank in order to secure the said loan”.
Korver was a director of a company, Cobow, that owns Albourne Guest House, Herald Live reported.
He reportedly controlled the “financial and banking affairs” of the company before he resigned in 2016. That was after he opened a “call deposit account” on behalf of the company with the bank in Mauritius and obtained a Rs20million (R6.8million) loan, the newspaper explained.
His two co-directors reportedly said they were not aware of Korver’s intentions and the fact that the account was linked to his personal account.
Korver was arrested in 2018 on “two counts of fraud, alternatively, theft, five counts each of forgery, uttering and money laundering”.
He is out on bail and is yet to plead. He reportedly launched an application in the high court in Cape Town for a permanent stay of his prosecution in 2021. He also challenged the specialised commercial crime court magistrate’s order that he must hand over an audit report he had commissioned to the prosecution.
Judge Judith Cloete, with Judge Lister Nuku concurring, reviewed and set aside the magistrate’s decision aside on Friday. But the court dismissed Korver’s application for a stay of prosecution.
“There is nothing to prevent [Korver] from again approaching court at a later stage if he is able to demonstrate that any potential prejudice has become such a reality during the course of the trial that his constitutionally entrenched fair trial rights have been irreparably infringed.
“Accordingly, the case made out by [Korver] falls short of demonstrating the irremediable prejudice which he asserts, and the application for a permanent stay must fail.”
This was Korver’s second legal blow in three months. In December, Judge Ashley Binns-Ward dismissed his application for bail conditions to be relaxed so he could attend his daughter’s birthday party in the Netherlands.
Korver told Binns-Ward he wanted to travel to his home country to “visit his elderly parents and one of his daughters who is currently living there”.
His bail conditions prevent him from travelling outside the Western Cape and Eastern Cape without notifying the investigating officer. He also had to surrender his travel documents.
Original article at Herald Live
