LeisureNet bosses agree to R6m forfeiture order

The agreement was announced by their advocate, Francois van Zyl, says a report on the Moneyweb site. The hearing was delayed while the prosecution and defence teams tried to reach agreement on the admission of documents that could have a bearing on the sentence. When the court convened, prosecutor Bruce Morrison handed in a draft forfeiture order under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act, which he said he would ask Uijs to formalise once he had passed sentence. ‘We have no objection to your making the order in these terms,’ Van Zyl told the judge. Morrison handed up a report from a Correctional Services official, saying as he did so that while the State would concede that ‘in isolation’ Gardener and Mitchell were suitable candidates for correctional supervision, he intended to argue whether this would be appropriate. He also handed up a record of Gardener\'s previous convictions in June 2005 on 14 counts of fraud and one of insider trading, resulting in a R2.9m fine and a suspended jail term. Morrison conceded a point raised by Van Zyl, that those charges were ‘part and parcel’ of the events that led to the current case, and ought not be regarded as a previous conviction when it came to sentence. Uijs postponed the case to today (Thursday) to give the prosecution and defence time to seek agreement on another document, part of which deals with the amount of money Gardener and Mitchell have paid back to LeisureNet\'s liquidators. He found last month that Gardener and Mitchell deliberately concealed from the LeisureNet board their financial interest in a German gym operation named Dalmore, at the time that the now-liquidated group bought out Dalmore in 1999 for some R30m. Full Moneyweb report