Breytenbach affair claim strongly denied
|Published
27/05/2013 Glynnis Breytenbacht smile with members of her legal team Jeremy Raizon (left) and Gerhard Wagenaarg moments after she was found not guilty on all fifteen charges against her. Picture: Phill Magakoe 27/05/2013 Glynnis Breytenbacht smile with members of her legal team Jeremy Raizon (left) and Gerhard Wagenaarg moments after she was found not guilty on all fifteen charges against her. Picture: Phill Magakoe
Johannesburg - Imperial Crown Trading (ICT) lawyer Ronnie Mendelow has denied that he and his legal team suggested that Joburg advocate Mike Hellens SC had an affair with Glynnis Breytenbach.
Breytenbach was suspended in April last year over several counts of misconduct that included abusing her authority by permitting Hellens, legal counsel for Kumba and Sishen Iron Ore Company, to assist and direct a criminal investigation of ICT. Hellens represented Sishen in the matter.
At the core of the National Prosecuting Authority’s case against Breytenbach during her disciplinary hearing, was the allegation that she and Hellens had an improper relationship.
But on Monday, the chairman of the disciplinary hearing, Selby Mbenenge SC, acquitted her, saying there was not an iota of evidence that she had exerted influence on the director of ICT, Archie Luhlabo, even indirectly through Hellens.
In an interview with The Star following Breytenbach’s acquittal, Hellens said Mendelow had lodged a complaint about him to the NPA, saying he had an unnaturally close relationship with Breytenbach and suggested they had had an affair.
But Mendelow denied this on Wednesday,, saying that in the complaint he lodged with the NPA it was “abundantly clear that no sexual or love relationship is insinuated in any shape or form”.
He added: “From the evidence I gave in the Breytenbach inquiry, it was perfectly clear that I did not at any stage in the slightest suggest any sex slur whatsoever or a love affair between advocate Hellens and advocate Breytenbach.
“Advocate Hellens knows this very well indeed, and one can only wonder at his motive for mis-stating that there was any such suggestion,” he said.
Mendelow said the complaint was that Breytenbach failed to maintain her objectivity in the course of the investigation against ICT. He said the opinion was expressed that Hellens was possibly exerting improper influence on behalf of his clients Sishen and Kumba over Breytenbach, her prosecuting staff and the police investigators, and that he was possibly controlling or directing the investigation in an indirect manner.”
Hellens said he intends to sue the NPA, ICT, Mendelow, and ICT’s counsel Edmund Wessels, saying they had suggested he and Breytenbach had had an affair.
Mendelow said Hellens could sue whoever he wanted to sue, as this was his constitutional right.
The Star