Decision looms for Nafiz Modack and co-accused as court considers discharge application

23 Jan 2025

If the plethora of charges against suspected underworld figure Nafiz Modack and his 14 co-accused are discharged on Monday, 27 January, the case will to all intents and purposes be closed.

Day three of the hearing of the application in the Western Cape High Court to have the charges against Nafiz Modack and his co-accused dropped was dominated on Thursday by the prosecution maintaining the State had prima facie evidence against the accused and that Judge Robert Henney should dismiss the application.

The State submitted that there was evidence upon which a reasonable person might convict the accused on the 124 charges they face. Arguments by State prosecutor Greg Wolmarans followed arguments by lawyers for Modack and his co-accused that concluded on Thursday morning.

Central to the arguments by counsel for those accused of the murder of Nicolaas Heerschap and the attempted murder of lawyer William Booth was that witness “Mr A’s” evidence implicating them was unreliable, not credible, replete with contradictions, and, to some extent, lies.

Mr A, a member of the Terrible West Side (TWS) gang, who the judge ruled cannot be named to protect his identity, has admitted to mistakenly killing Heerschap and is serving a 25-year prison sentence for the murder.

Mr A has already testified in the Western Cape High Court that alleged underworld figure Nafiz Modack ordered a hit on Nicolaas Heerschap’s son Nico, a police officer serving in the Hawks, in July 2019. In a plea and punishment deal, Mr A mentioned the names of those accused of murdering Heerschap senior and attempting to kill Booth.

Modack and debt collector and former rugby player Zane Kilian are the two main accused in Lt Col Charl Kinnear’s assassination on 18 September 2020. The State contends that they also conspired in a failed attempt to murder lawyer William Booth on 9 April 2020.

Modack and Kilian, with the other accused, are collectively facing 124 charges, including murder, attempted murder, corruption, gangsterism, extortion, the illegal interception of communications, money laundering and contravention of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act.

The other accused are Jacques Cronje, Ziyaad Poole, Moegamat Brown, Riyaat Gesant, Fagmeed Kelly, Mario Petersen, Petrus Visser, Janick Adonis, Amaal Jantjies, former AGU Sergeant Ashley Tabisher, Yaseen Modack, Mogamat Mukudam and Ricardo Morgan.

Poole, Brown, Gesant, Kelly and Petersen are the main accused in the Heerschap murder.

Modack and his co-accused pleaded not guilty to the charges in January 2024.

Evidentiary footprint

Wolmarans submitted a 46-page heads of argument explaining why the court should dismiss Modack and his co-accuseds’ motion for discharge.

“When I compared the evidence footprint to the attack on Booth and the murder of Kinnear, everything matched. When one pulls at the strings of what happened, it begins with Kinnear, the pinging, information gathering, the calculation of the expected time of arrival from one location to his house in Bishop Lavis, the increase in pinging, particularly as we approached September 2020, and Kilian was asking for more bundles a few days before the murder, and what struck me was that this pinging was not automatic.

“Kilian was physically present for each ping. On the day of the Kinnear murder, by 5am, the pings had escalated so dramatically that Kilian appeared to be pinging every three minutes. He must have that phone glued to his hands,” he told the court.

“Kilian was providing information, and the pinging tool was used to notify that Kinnear was approaching his address. Kilian had that knowledge.”

Read more: ‘Modack told me he was proud of the job’, says State witness on Heerschap murder’

Modack ‘pulled the strings’

Wolmarans said that the Empire Investments Account was the “beating heart” of Modack’s corruption “machine”: “The classic method for money laundering is to mix dirty money with clean money. The Modack Enterprise, led by Modack and managed by Poole, serves as the cornerstone of the indictment. Therefore, the State does not need to prove all allegations of corruption. The Empire Investment Account is the beating heart of this machine.”

He said that it was a “pointless task” to look at the charges in isolation from one another. “You have to all the time pull back and see that it is actually Modack who was pulling strings, he is the one connected to the murder counts, TWS gang and pinger Kilian.”

Judgment will be delivered on Monday, 27 January. DM

Categories:

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...

South Africa

Evidentiary footprint

Modack ‘pulled the strings’