Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa

MEDIA SUMMARY– JUDGMENT DELIVERED IN SUPREME
COURT OF APPEAL

From:
The Registrar, Supreme Court of Appeal

Date:
Thursday 1 April 2004

Status:
Immediate

Please note that the media summary is intended for the benefit of
the media and does not form part of the judgment of the Supreme
Court of Appeal

Powell v Honourable Mr Justice WJ van der Merwe

The Supreme Court of Appeal has upheld the appeal of insolvency
practitioner Mr Oliver Powell concerning search and seizure
operations that took place at his Johannesburg home and
business, and his Ellisras farm, in October and November 1999.
The operations were carried out under the National Prosecuting
Authority Act 32 of 1998.  The Act gives the Investigating
Directorate for Serious Economic Offences (IDSEO) wide powers
to investigate scheduled and related offences.

The Pretoria High Court dismissed Powell’s complaints, but the
SCA reversed this judgment.  It found unanimously that the
preparatory investigation launched in October 1999 by advocate
Jan Swanepoel, then head of IDSEO, was not properly instituted,
because he specified no offence to be investigated, and instead
purported to initiate an investigation that ranged wider than the
statute permitted.

The SCA also held unanimously that the search warrants issued
were over-broad and invalid and had to be set aside.  It set out the
history of the scrutiny of search warrants by the South African
courts since 1891 under rights and powers that are now
entrenched in the Constitution.

The majority of the Court agreed with the Pretoria High Court on
one aspect of the case, namely that the Directorate had submitted

sufficient information to the Judge who issued the original warrant.
One member of the SCA held on this point that the member of
IDSEO applying for the warrant had misrepresented the situation
to the judge, and that the warrants should be set aside also on this
additional ground.

--ends--