INLSA
Gaston Savoi
Tania Broughton
AFTER months of doing battle with the police for permission to travel, fraud and corruption accused Gaston Savoi finally achieved success in the Supreme Court of Appeal yesterday, which amended his bail conditions to make it easier for him to do business abroad.
Savoi – who is an accused in the so-called “amigos trial”, involving allegations of deals that cost the provincial government about R144 million – complained to the appeal court that those with the power to approve or decline his travels were refusing to objectively apply their minds to his applications. And the court agreed, saying the “arbitrary and inappropriate” responses to his requests could be fairly described as an abuse of power.
For this reason, the court said, it was amending the Uruguayan businessman’s bail conditions, essentially allowing him to travel for business on 10 days’ notice to the State, after providing the investigating officer with a full itinerary.
Savoi is on bail in both the Northern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. He is facing charges involving the sale of water purification and oxygen plants to both provincial governments. The allegation is that he paid sweeteners to secure deals to provide the devices at hugely inflated prices.
Savoi says he needs to do business outside the country – mainly in Brazil, Argentina and Angola – to keep his Intaka company afloat. In his affidavit before the court, he says in the four and a half years that he has been aware of the investigation against him, he has travelled overseas 50 times and has always returned to SA.
Yesterday, Judge Jonathan Heher, with Judges Surreta Snyder and Malcolm Wallis concurring, said Savoi was not regarded as a flight risk and never had been.
In March this year, he attempted to get permission to travel to Angola but, in spite of successful court applications in KZN and the Northern Cape, he was informed by one of the investigators, Colonel Clarence Jones, that if he tried to leave the country, he would be arrested by border control authorities.
“This was an abuse of power by Jones to thwart the court orders. It is apparent that the investigation team… did not have… any sustainable factual objection related to the breach of his bail conditions,” the judge said. He said the new conditions would better honour the spirit of the original granting of bail.
Savoi will appear in court again in January.
