Judge President John Hlope asks questions during interviews for the deputy judge president position in the Western Cape division of the High Court on 6 April 2016.
PHOTO: Trevor Samson/Gallo Images
Judge President John Hlophe should remain in office, say a group of lawyers and legal practitioners who joined forces in support of the embattled judge president of the Western Cape division of the High Court.
Project 27 and the Black People's National Crisis Committee (BPNCC) intend to petition President Cyril Ramaphosa not to suspend Hlophe.
This follows a recommendation by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) that Hlophe be suspended, pending a vote in the National Assembly on whether or not he should be impeached.
Advocate Fairuz Seria said Project 27 intends to hand over the petition on Thursday to Parliament.
The petition argues that Hlophe has defended transformation policies for 27 years and has opened doors for black legal practitioners to have access to the legal profession in the Western Cape.
The petition reads:
A recommendation now to suspend a judge, taking into account the Cape’s first black jurist with the deepest footprints of transformation in the legal profession, would be improper and would, ironically, undermine the very administration of justice and independence of the legal profession for which we all strive.
Meanwhile, the BPNCC will be marching to Parliament on Thursday.
"Any intended move for suspension does not serve the interest of justice," said the organisation's campaign coordinator, Chumani Maxwele.
Helen Suzman Foundation executive director Nicole Fritz said a suspension should not be seen as a "punitive" measure, but as a means to protect the integrity of the judicial system, News24 reported previously.
"If you have very serious charges which are being faced by a judicial officer, even if they have not yet been established, you don't necessarily want the judicial officer holding judicial office," she said at the time.
READ | Warning of untold damage: Former ConCourt justices adamant Hlophe must be sent packing
"They (the judge) might be able to use that office to prejudice the procedure. These disciplinary proceedings may also taint the exercise of their (the judge's) powers, which might put them into question later on and so in the public's interest, it is best that they step aside," Fritz said.
The JSC found Hlophe guilty of seeking to influence Constitutional Court justices Bess Nkabinde and Chris Jafta to violate their oaths of office in favour of former president Jacob Zuma.
At the time, Zuma was challenging the legality of warrants used by the later-disbanded Scorpions to seize 93 000 pages of corruption trial evidence against him, linked to the State's arms deal case.
Evidence led at the JSC tribunal tasked with investigating Hlophe revealed he had told Nkabinde and Jafta that Zuma was being persecuted just as he (Hlophe) had been persecuted.
He also told both justices he believed the Supreme Court of Appeal, which upheld the legality of the warrants in a majority ruling, had "got it wrong".
Ultimately, the tribunal found that Hlophe had embarked on a premeditated campaign to influence Jafta and Nkabinde in their evaluation of Zuma's case, including telling Nkabinde there was no case against Zuma and people would lose their jobs when he became president.
It recommended Hlophe should face impeachment, which paved the way for the JSC's recommendation that he be suspended.
Elon Musk has filed claims against Twitter as he fights back against the tech firm's lawsuit demanding he be held to his $44-billion buyout deal.
Musk's counter-suit was submitted along with a legal defence against Twitter's claim that the billionaire is contractually bound to complete the deal he inked in April to buy Twitter, the Chancery Court in the state of Delaware said in a notice on Friday.
The 164-page filing was submitted as being "confidential", meaning the documents were not accessible by the public, the notice indicated.
Rules of the court, however, require Musk to submit a public version of the filing with trade secrets or other sensitive information redacted.
A judge has ordered a five-day trial over Twitter's lawsuit against Musk to begin on October 17.
The Tesla boss wooed Twitter's board with a $54.20 per-share offer, but then in July announced he was "terminating" their agreement on accusations the firm misled him regarding its tally of fake and spam accounts.
READ MORE: Elon Musk-Twitter saga, explained
Row over bots
Twitter, whose stock price closed at $41.61 on Friday, has stuck by its estimates regarding accounts run by software "bots" rather than people, and argued that Musk is contriving excuses to back out of the contract.
The social media platform has urged shareholders to endorse the deal, setting a vote on the merger for September 13.
"We are committed to closing the merger on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk," Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal and board chairperson Bret Taylor said in a copy of a letter to investors.
Billions of dollars are at stake, but so is the future of Twitter, which Musk has said should allow any legal speech — an absolutist position that has sparked fears the network could be used to incite violence.
READ MORE: Twitter reports quarterly loss, cites Musk buyout uncertainty
Source: AFP
The singer's father will also have to produce all documents requested and appear for a deposition, Rosengart said outside of the courthouse, calling it "another very good day for Britney."
CNN has reached out to Jamie Spears' attorney for comment on the ruling.
"We hope (Jamie Spears) will accept his losses and simply move on and leave his daughter alone," Rosengart told CNN in a statement. "That is what any decent man, what any decent father would do."
The Grammy-winner was in a court-ordered conservatorship for 13 years before it was terminated in November. Spears' father acted as her co-conservator from the conservatorship's inception in 2008. This put him in charge of her finances and, at some points, her medical decisions.
"This is not about Britney, this is beyond Britney," Rosengart said while surrounded by supporters of the bill. "There is a lot of people in the country and in the state who are not free and are subjected to forced abusive conservatorships. And that's something I look forward to working with legislators on, both in California and Washington DC."
French prosecutors have opened an investigation into the assets owned by Russian oligarchs, a legal source said on Monday.
The probe is expected to look into possible money laundering and corruption.
The investigation, first reported by the Parisien newspaper, comes after anti-graft group Transparency International filed a legal complaint against oligarchs in France in May.
France has frozen Russian-owned assets worth billions of euros since the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine in February, including luxury yachts, ski chalets and property.
The country's Mediterranean coast, high-end ski resorts and Parisian real estate market have long been favoured destinations for Russian cash for investment and leisure.
"The ambitions of the sanctions regime against Russia and the first asset seizures are running into difficulties in identifying the assets owned by sanctioned individuals," Transparency International France said in a statement last month.
"In France, as elsewhere, the hunt for goods owned by oligarchs and others close to the Russian regime is at a standstill," it added as it filed its legal case.
The French government has said it faces serious difficulties in identifying and seizing assets that are often owned by overseas shell companies.
Transparency International said it had "drawn up an inventory of real estate assets in France of several oligarchs and people close to the Russian regime".
It said it possessed evidence of how the money used to pay for them came from illicit sources.
European Union countries have frozen assets worth 13.8 billion euros ($14.1 billion) linked to sanctioned Russian and Belarusian individuals, according to figures from July 12.
The EU has so far adopted six sanction packages against Russia, including a ban on most Russian oil imports that was approved in early June.
The French probe will be led by specialised investigators at the Central Office for the Repression of Major Financial Crime, part of the National Financial Prosecutors' Office.
