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2 Jun, 2005

Advisor found guilty

Judgement0 Comments

Shaik, a financial adviser to Zuma is found guilty on two accounts of corruption and one of fraud. He remains free on bail. The judge compares corruption to a cancer subverting democracy and human rights and rejects the defence lawyer’s plea for clemency because Shaik had fought apartheid.

His corporate empire’s progress and prosperity was plainly linked to the possibility that Jacob Zuma would finally ascend to the highest political office…Far from carrying out the object of [South Africa’s liberation] struggle, this whole saga represents a subversion of it…It was a typical example of a privileged treatment to a selected political figure in a situation redolent with lack of transparency and subversive of administrative fairness and integrity. And that is what the law seeks to punish.