The magistrate who dismissed the corruption case against former Eskom executive Matshela Koko and others, allegedly failed to disclose his own business dealings with Eskom.
News24 revealed that Magistrate StanleyJacobs is a director of BEP African Consulting registered in 2000. He resigned as a director in 2001, was reappointed in 2008, and remains a director.
BEP was paid R14.3 million between December 2011 and July 2016, when Koko and co-accused Frans Sithole held senior positions at Eskom.
Jacobs said he had never met either man, the company was dormant, and he had been removed as a director. He said he had to obtain a court order to be reinstated.
However, there is no record of a reinstatement application. The only application on record was in 2014 to have his ex-partner and former co-director, Rachel Julius, removed as a director.
Jacobs told the Magistrate’s Commission that he had made the disclosure to all the legal representatives in his chambers on the morning he first heard the case (23 March 2023), having taken it over from Magistrate Deon Minnie.
The ID said that Jacobs never disclosed any business relationship with Eskom or any of the accused. If he had, the ID would definitely have applied for his recusal.
Jacobs said he took over the case, due to a confusion of dates one Magistrate Deon van Rooyen. Van Rooyen couldn’t be contacted to confirm this. The actual presiding magistrate, Deon Minnie, said he had recused himself and he asked Jacobs to take over.
At Jacobs first appearance the ID argued that it had collected more than 800 statements and 18 terabytes of data, running into millions of pages. Witness statements also needed to be obtained from the US, UK and Germany.
In November 2023 he struck the matter from the roll.