A High Court indictment listing seven charges, including racketeering, was handed to prominent Western Cape businessman Irshaad Laher on Wednesday, when he made his final preliminary appearance in the Bellville District Court.
Laher, 41, of Rondebosch in Cape Town’s southern suburbs, appeared before magistrate Marietjie Geldenhuys, who warned him to make his first appearance in the Western Cape High Court, on Friday.
The High Court proceedings are to take the form of a pre-trial conference, to ensure that Laher’s defence team is in place and that all loose ends are properly tied up before his trial proper commences.
At an appearance in July in the Bellville court, he was in the dock with gun collector Allan Robert Raves, whose case has already been transferred to the High Court.
On Friday, Raves and Laher will appear in the High Court together, at their first pre-trial conference.
At Wednesday’s proceedings, the State was represented by advocates Shareen Riley and Christiaan de Jongh, both attached to the Western Cape Directorate for Public Prosecutions, who are to prosecute the two cases combined as one.
Laher is out on R100 000 bail, and Raves on R20 000.
Raves recently appeared in the Bellville court with former police colonel Christiaan Lodewyk Prinsloo, of Vereeniging, who was jailed for 18 years in plea bargain proceedings, on similar charges.
Raves faces 15 counts – racketeering, corruption, money laundering, three of theft, the unlawful sale or supply of firearms and ammunition, possession of prohibited firearms and ammunition, the illegal possession of firearm parts, erasing the serial number of a firearm, defacing marks on a SANDF firearm, the destruction of firearms without authority, damaging or destroying firearms and failure to keep a proper register of firearms.
Laher faces seven charges – racketeering, corruption, money laundering, the illegal sale of firearms and ammunition, theft, the possession of prohibited firearms, and the illegal possession of ammunition.
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