Rhino Poaching: Arrests, Prosecutions & Sentencing

[trailrunner]

Wow this is complex indeed, can the justice system now do what it is supposed to do.

[Flutterby]

Bail denied in rhino poaching case

By Alex Mitchley

An attorney arrested as part of the rounding up of one of South Africa’s biggest rhino poaching syndicates had an urgent bail application heard and overturned at the Pretoria High Court on Saturday morning. Share & Rate this article

The Pretoria High Court heard the application for bail, which stated that the accused was not a flight risk, had property and would suffer financially if he was not granted bail.
The judge said he thought the initial charge against the accused was a charge of theft to the value of R390 000 as stated on the warrant of arrest.
However, a statement from the Hawks’ Colonel Johan Jooste, which was submitted by the state, provided further details.
The accused also faces charges of racketeering, conspiracy, intimidation, keeping of a protected animal and the selling and receiving of rhino horns.

The judge said the charges were very serious. He added that the state showed the court that violence was involved when the alleged crimes were committed and that the accused was potentially part of the syndicate.
The court also noted the prevalence and severity of rhino poaching in South Africa.
Although the accused offered up his passport, the court was of the opinion that South Africa has long borders that could be crossed at anytime.
The court was also of the opinion that because the accused is a wealthy man, he will be prepared to pay any amount that is set as bail in light of the heavy sentences he will face if convicted.
On these grounds, the bail application was dismissed and the accused remained in custody.
The alleged kingpin of the syndicate and eight other syndicate members were arrested on Friday,while one or the suspects handed himself in, following a yearlong investigation.
The top man was arrested in front of the Pretoria North Magistrate’s Court as he arrived to appear on charges of illegal possession of scheduled substances and firearms.
All 10 suspects are expected to appear in Hatfield court in Pretoria on 22 September.

[Toko]

RHINO SYNDICATE ‘RINGLEADER’ ARRESTED

September 22, 2014 ·
By Julian Rademeyer

I first met Hugo Ras in April 2012 in the corridor of the Pretoria North Regional Court. I’d heard the dark tales that swirled around him and stories about the numerous run-ins he’d had with the law. But, as he boasted, few of the cases ever stuck.
Now, more than two-and-half years later, Ras is accused of being the “ringleader” of a poaching syndicate that “contributed to the brutal slaughter and mutilation of 24 rhino in state and privately-owned reserves”. Two rhino survived, both horribly disfigured.
Ras was picked up on Friday, 19 September by members of the Hawks – the South African Police’s Directorate of Priority Crimes Investigation – in front of the same court building where I’d first crossed paths with him. At the time of his arrest Ras was appearing in another poaching-related case; one has been dragging on since 2011.
Simultaneously, nine other suspects were arrested in four provinces. According to police, they included his wife Trudie, his brother Anton, a Pretoria attorney who represented him, Joseph Wilkinson, a game capture pilot, Bonnie Steyn, and, significantly, a warrant officer in the Hawks, Willie Oosthuizen.

The syndicate members are alleged to have obtained at least 84 rhino horns and sold them to dealers in Southeast Asia and Vietnam. Aside from the 41 horns obtained in the poaching incidents, at least 14 horns are alleged to have been stolen from a government building.
The ten suspects are expected to face numerous counts of theft, fraud, damage to property (related to the killing and mutilation of rhinos), racketeering, money-laundering, intimidation and illegal possession of firearms and ammunition when they go on trial.
According to an article written by The Citizen newspaper’s Alex Mitchley, 22 of the rhino targeted by the syndicate were darted with M99, a powerful anaesthetic related to morphine. Two others were shot.
The case has been postponed to 29 September.

Here’s an extract from Killing for Profit that deals with Ras:
Flamingo’s is one of Pretoria’s more notorious dens of iniquity. In a previous incarnation it was the stomping ground of an infamous Pretoria biker gang. And in 2010, after a torrid night’s drinking at the club, Blue Bulls and Super 14 rugby star, Bees Roux, beat a Metro policeman to death.
In August 2011, the club’s one-time silent partner, a disgraced safari company owner, Hugo Ras, was arrested in a police raid on his three-storey home in Magalieskruin in northern Pretoria.
During a search, investigators found an unlicensed firearm and large quantities of M99, a powerful anaesthetic that is widely used in game capture and also to dart rhinos. The drug– which is 3 000 times more potent than morphine – is fatal to humans, and its distribution is meant to be strictly controlled.
Police had obtained a warrant on the basis that they wanted to question Ras about the murder of a Russian stripper, Lana Muratava. She had disappeared from Flamingo’s late one night in November 2010 and was last seen alive with a man in a white Land Cruiser. Her corpse was discovered days later in a ditch next to a road in Hammanskraal. There were claims that she had been killed with M99, but early tabloid press reports suggested that the back of her skull had been repeatedly bashed in. Other rumours alleged she had been strangled.
Ras was charged, but not for the murder. He and seven others, including three veterinarians, faced provisional charges of contravening the Medicines and Related Substances Control Act over the illegal distribution of M99.
I met Ras outside the Pretoria North Magistrate’s Court in April 2012. He was in a chatty mood. The case had been postponed again and charges against five of his co-accused had been dropped. He believed the case was crumbling. He denied any knowledge of Muratava’s death.
‘The girl was an interpreter for me when I had Russian clients on my farm.’ The clients, he said, invariably ‘wanted an interpreter and also a girl to f***. I decided to make a plan and get a girl who interprets and screws. She makes more money and there is one less person in the Land Cruiser when we go out hunting. That is the only f***ing connection I had with her. I never touched her. The stories that people think up are like Isidingo, The Wild, Sewende Laan and Binnelanders [local television soap operas] all rolled into one.’
It wasn’t the first time that Ras had fallen foul of the law. In 2000 and 2001, he was arrested for various contraventions of nature conservation and customs regulations and fined. In 2004, the Mail & Guardian newspaper revealed that a bull elephant Ras had purchased from the Kruger National Park had been hunted by a Texan oil magnate within hours of its arrival on a game farm near Rustenburg in North West. Gavin Hulett, a park warden, told the paper that four bull elephants had been sold to Ras on condition that they would not be hunted. Ras claimed the bull was shot after it broke out of camp.
A year later he was back in the news, this time charged with murder after a contractor working on his farm was attacked and killed by a lion. The charge was eventually dropped. The same year, Ras was fined for assault. The day I spoke to him outside court, he boasted about his numerous run-ins with police and the courts, saying the charges rarely stuck.

[Flutterby]

Posted today on FB by Allison Thomson of OSCAP:

South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal has reduced the 30 year jail term handed down to rhino horn trafficker Chumlong Lemtongthai - one of the key figures in Killing for Profit - to 13 years. He also has to pay a R1-million fine.
Acting deputy judge president Mahomed Navsa wrote in his judgment that "the sentence of 30 years imprisonment is too severe and induces a sense of shock".
"It is disproportionate when compared to the minimum sentences statutorily prescribed for other serious offences. Thus, we are at large to interfere in the sentence. The appellant identified the company
he worked for and whose instructions he carried out in perpetrating the offences in question. In my view, having regard to the fact that the killing of the 26 rhinos occurred during one operation, a sentence of imprisonment of six months in respect of each of counts 27 to 52 is an appropriate sentence. This amounts to a total of 13 years imprisonment.
"In arriving at this conclusion, I have borne in mind that the appellant was in custody for 16 months awaiting the finalisation of his trial....Thus, the effective sentence is payment of a fine of R1-million plus a period of imprisonment of thirteen years, antedated to 9 July 2011 and failing payment of the fine to an effective period of imprisonment of 18 years.‟

You can see the complete judgement here.

[Richprins]

the court was of the opinion that South Africa has long borders that could be crossed at any time.

That is very significant...from a judge!

[H. erectus]

Seems fair to me,....

Thus, the effective sentence is payment of a fine of R1-million plus a period of imprisonment of thirteen years, antedated to 9 July 2011 and failing payment of the fine to an effective period of imprisonment of 18 years.‟

Though we would all like to see them hang at the gallows!!!!

What strikes at my thoughts, is a recent athlete's incident cited as manslaughter,
in the run up to this decision, the accused was granted bail!!!???

Hoyetie toytie, what's going in all fairness????

[Richprins]

The athlete is not a "flight risk", according to the court, H.?

Also fair enough?

[H. erectus]

In other words, that thin red line of good and bad,

must always be taken "too" consideration, for we dwell
as innocent individuals in the dark valleys of life!!!???

"We did it!!, but really did not mean to"" So what now?

[Richprins]

Now we applaud the stronger sentences!

[H. erectus]

So mr. paddle foot got off lightly,..

would be reassuring to know,.. Can run fast,
but not all that far, if that is what the prosecutors
are all about,..

Let's wait and see this one pan out,....