Iuze Mukube
Former justice minister Sacky Shanghala and his co-accused have lodged an application to be allowed to appeal to the Supreme Court against the ruling of Acting Judge Marilize du Plessis, which disallowed them from having access to bilateral agreements.
The bilateral agreement, which forms part of the case docket, was of Namibia, Iceland, Norway, and the United Arab Emirates.
The judge had denied the accused this part of the docket, with also the one seeking access to communications between the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and auditing firm, Deloitte.
Shanghala and his co-applicant’s request was rooted in that their right to a fair trial was infringed by the State in not giving them full disclosure to the case docket.
The judge’s ruling only ordered the State to provide additional disclosure materials before 15 September to the accused.
During the hearing on Tuesday, Shanghala argued the court erred and misdirected itself on the facts they placed before it.
This, he said, is because they never asserted as concluded by the judge that they were seeking disclosure from part of an “investigating diary”, but that they simply sought for full disclosure of the docket.
In addition, he stated there was no evidence placed before the court that they received the disclosure of the police investigations as concluded by the court.
He argued that partial disclosure was done by the State, hence they seek full disclosure.
The State represented by Ed Marondedze, opposed the application. He argued that the submission by Shanghala for leave to appeal was without merit and stood to be dismissed.
Marondedze argued that instead of showing their prospect in succeeding on appeal, the applicant simply dedicated their energy in quoting portions of the ruling.
He added that they simply repeated what they demanded in their earlier application and then concluded that the Supreme Court will arrive at a different conclusion.
The prosecutor noted that their grounds of appeal were “vague and embarrassing, with no explanation given as to what they meant by the “full disclosure of the docket”.”
He also argued the Prosecutor General, had indicated already that the disclosure that they sought, they were not entitled to it.
He further added that all the evidence gathered by the investigators had been disclosed fully to the accused already, hence there is no infringement to a fair trial at all.
The fishrot accused face over 300 counts relating to allegedly receiving gratification and bribes, in exchange for facilitation fishing quotas to Icelandic fishing company, Samherji. The trial was postponed to 10 November 2025.