Gqeberha businessman Shaun Ah Shene has emerged victorious after the city’s high court this week granted an application to have a restraint order against his assets rescinded.
No stranger to run-ins with the law, Ah Shene was previously arrested in connection with numerous allegations ranging from murder to perlemoen poaching, but has never been convicted of a crime.
On Tuesday, the Gqeberha high court granted an application by the National Director of Public Prosecutions to rescind a restraint order that was made official in May 2016.
The prosecuting authority brought the application because fraud charges against Ah Shene and his company were withdrawn five years ago.
The order had effectively placed assets belonging to Ah Shene, his wife, Virginia, and his business, Coral Blue Trading CC, in the hands of a curator after the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) claimed they were obtained through illicit activities.
The assets included 21 investment accounts, 13 fixed properties in North End, Kensington, Sydenham, Bethelsdorp and Korsten, as well as an undisclosed amount of cash held in the trust account of Dullabh & Co Attorneys in Makhanda.
The AFU brought the initial application for the order after Ah Shene was arrested during a dramatic early-morning raid at his then Adcockvale home in October 2015 and charged with six counts of fraud totalling R2.1m.
It was alleged at the time that between July 2003 and March 2009 Ah Shene had submitted false tax returns to the SA Revenue Service by under-declaring his income.
However, charges against Ah Shene, his wife and his business were officially withdrawn by the state in July 2018.
At the time, prosecutor Velile Makasana, who was standing in for state advocate Elna Smit, told magistrate Johannes Claassen that the state intended to withdraw all charges against Ah Shene after he successfully made representations to the director of public prosecutions.
A founding affidavit penned by senior deputy director of public prosecutions Dr Nkululeko Ndzengu, on behalf of the national director, said the application for the rescission of the restraint order stemmed from the fact that the criminal charges against the Ah Shenes and Coral Blue had been permanently withdrawn on July 3 2018.
The order to rescind was signed off by acting judge Sally Collett.
Virginia was cited in court papers as a respondent because the two are married in community of property.
Ah Shene, a father of four, had long been alleged to have been the founder of Gqeberha’s oldest northern areas gang, the Ah Shenes, also called “The Chinas”.
In 2014, the Ah Shenes were acquitted in the Gqeberha regional court on a charge of possession of stolen property and money laundering after it was found that the warrant used by the police to search the couple’s Adcockvale home in 2008 was defective.
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