Zunaid Moti’s former legal adviser Clinton van Niekerk, who the businessman accuses of stealing sensitive files from his companies, is in witness protection and co-operating with the Hawks, ‘who have taken the information in his possession and the threat to his life, seriously’.

News24 reports that this is according to Van Niekerk’s mother, Karen Botha, who has deposed an affidavit opposing a bid by Moti to overturn a KZN High Court (Durban) order which effectively set aside a warrant for his arrest and resulted in him being freed from police custody.

Van Niekerk, who was employed by one of the 250 companies in the Moti Group, resigned in November.

Moti alleges this was after he downloaded thousands of files from the group’s OneDrive document storage system while on sick leave, just before his resignation.

Van Niekerk was arrested at Durban’s King Shaka Airport as he was about to board an international flight on 26 January, apparently fearing for his life.

His lawyers made an urgent ex parte application before Acting Judge Warren Shapiro, securing an order that he remain in cells at Verulam, protected from police in Johannesburg who were said to allegedly be in Moti’s pocket. 

However, when the order was served at the local police station, Van Niekerk had already left with the investigating officer.

The next day, the order was made final and the case struck from the roll in the Randburg Magistrate's Court.

A director of one of Moti’s companies, David Willoughby, has now launched an urgent application in the KZN High Court, to be heard today, in which he wants Shapiro’s ‘unlawful’ orders set aside, reports News24.

Willoughby says Van Niekerk remains a flight risk and that since his unconditional release, the group’s attorneys and forensic examiner Paul O’Sullivan had met with police and prosecutors to discuss the way forward.

Randburg senior public prosecutor Petrus Skhosana said, given the order granted by Shapiro, a new warrant could not be issued without the approval of the provincial DPP Andrew Chauke.

Botha, in her affidavit filed on behalf of her son, said Shapiro’s order was the ‘necessary result of judicial oversight which eventually halted the continuation of an extreme and outrageous injustice’.

‘More recent developments – Clinton having gone into witness protection under the Witness Protection Act – would indicate that the criminal charges are nothing less than an attempt to crush a criminal investigation in which Clinton is a material witness,’ she said.

Since his release and ‘mindful of the very real threat to his life’, Botha said contact had been made with the Hawks.

Full News24 report