Madlanga to deliver ruling on Carrim’s postponement application

The Madlanga Commission will shortly deliver its ruling on North-West businessman Sulieman Carrim’s application for a postponement.

Carrim, who suffered a heart attack in April, has reportedly been medically unfit to testify before the commission.

He has been implicated in the SAPS’s Medicare 24 tender matter and is being investigated for multi-million-rand transactions.

Commission Chairperson Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga says the ruling could not be delivered earlier today because Carrim’s legal representatives had not yet been notified.

“My ruling on the Carrim postponement application is ready. Why I am not delivering it now or did not deliver it in the morning was because Mr. Carrim’s attendees had not been advised. I gave an instruction to the commission’s attendees to write to Mr. Carrim’s attendees. So, I will deliver the ruling at 2 p.m. before we commence,” says Madlanga.

Carrim, who suffered a heart attack in April this year, has been unable to testify before the Commission due to ill health.

Evidence leader Advocate Adila Hassim, who opposed the application, presented CCTV footage and cellphone geolocation data which she said showed that Carrim frequently left the medical facility where he was receiving treatment for extended periods.

Hassim argued that the evidence contradicts affidavits filed by Carrim’s wife and treating doctor, which claim that his movements were restricted and tightly controlled.

“The analysis of the maps and the geolocation data and what they show is that almost every single day Mr. Carrim leaves the facility and that on most days he’s out of the facility for at least eight hours, sometimes longer which is what my learned friend was objecting to. The inverse inpatient reference that was made in the answering affidavit was that he spends more time outside of the facility than he does inside the facility is really the point of that so what we get now is a materially different picture from what we first had.”