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dam-l Lesotho corruption trial begins/LS
LESOTHO-BRIBERY
BRIBERY CASE OF LESOTHO WATER PROJECT CEO MARKED BY TECHNICAL ARGUMENT
LESOTHO 5 June 2000 Sapa
The hearing into the multi-million rand bribery case involving
former chief executive of the Lesotho Highlands Water
Project Masupa Sole, and several major international contractors,
was on Monday marked by highly technical legal
argument by senior counsel for the defence in the Lesotho High Court.
Sole is facing 16 counts of bribery related to alleged payments made
by international companies from Britain, Germany,
France and Switzerland secretly into his Swiss bank accounts through
intermediaries.
The case is being held before former Lesotho chief justice, Judge
Brandon Cullinan.
Advocate Harim Slomowitz, a senior counsel for Sogreah of France,
submitted that the indictment against the company
was not properly framed as it had incorrectly sighted its
representative, Andrew Griffiths.
Slomowitz said Griffiths was not and had not been shown to be a
director or servant of Sogreah.
He said in terms of the criminal procedure and evidence act, an
accused which is a company could only be indicted if it
was represented in court by a director or a servant.
Slomowitz said the framers of the indictment "close Griffiths with
different hats and permit him to slip in and out of
whatever guises they seek to close him in".
The defence applied for the separation of trials for the accused
"because they had been improperly charged together".
The hearing continues.
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source: gopher://gopher.anc.org.za/00/anc/newsbrief/2000/news0606
processed Tue 6 Jun 2000 09:40 SAST.
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Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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