Three separate cases involving alleged underworld figures are being heard in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court.
|||Reminiscent murmurs about the city’s notorious night life back in the 1990s filled the corridors of the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on Monday as three separate cases involving alleged underworld figures were heard there.
Slain businessman Cyril Beeka’s name was brought up often as a number of former bouncers, businessmen and friends, each there to support the accused in the respective three cases, reunited.
The following accused appeared in court on Monday:
* Igor Russol, the self-proclaimed head of the Russian underworld in Cape Town and best friend of Yuri “the Russian” Ulianitski, and a local co-accused, Kevin Mark Bailey, 50. They allegedly extorted R600 000 and a luxury car from businessmen around the city.
Bailey, from Durbanville, was granted R2 000 bail.
Russol was remanded until a bail hearing next week.
* Houssain Ait Taleb, better known as Houssain Moroccan, who previously worked under Beeka and who now works for the new bouncer company Specialised Protection Services (SPS), for allegedly pointing a firearm in a city nightclub at the weekend.
SPS is an amalgamation of two rival companies, one of which was previously run by Beeka.
The case against Taleb was withdrawn.
* Dobrosav Gavric, twho was driving Beeka when he was murdered in March last year and who was convicted in Serbia of murdering a warlord and two others 13 years ago, appeared in three courtrooms on different charges.
On Monday, while Taleb was sitting in a corridor waiting for his case to be called, a man who said he was a friend of Beeka’s, and who declined to be named, walked up to Taleb and greeted him warmly. Taleb said they had met nearly two decades ago when they were both involved in night club security.
The man, at court to support Gavric, said he had been the first bouncer under Beeka – who in the 1990s was notorious for violently forcing his protection services on city clubs.
“It was just me, Cyril and a dog named Scorpio,” the man said. He later said he and Beeka had used another dog, Satchmo, a name given to it because of its squashed pug-like face, to sniff out drug dealers and clear clubs of unwanted patrons.
Outside the court building, three men who identified themselves as SPS bouncers were questioning whether Mark Lifman, a businessman who backs SPS and who police said in court last month was being probed for organised crime, would arrive in support of Taleb.
A while later inside the building, Gavric then made his first appearance in one courtroom. He then walked, flanked by armed police officers, to two other court rooms.
In the first courtroom, a matter regarding his possible deportation was taken off the roll because last week he was granted a permit to temporarily remain in SA.
In the second courtroom, details about his possible extradition were queried and he appeared in the third courtroom on fraud charges relating to a false passport, gun and driver’s licence he had been using in SA.
These two matters were postponed to Friday.
Shortly after Gavric walked down to the holding cells, Russol and Bailey then appeared in the same dock.
As Russol, who looked dishevelled in a red and blue tracksuit, took his position, Taleb then walked into the courtroom and was joined by another Moroccan bouncer.
Taleb glanced at Russol, smirked, then showed a document, which stated Taleb would not be prosecuted.
He then walked out the courtroom and shortly afterwards it was heard that Russol would remain in custody. - Cape Times
caryn.dolley@inl.co.za