Honeymoon bride murder accused Shrien Dewani is spending hundreds of thousands of rands preparing for his defence if he goes on trial in South Africa.
This is part of a two-prong battle being waged by Dewani, who is also engaged in an expensive battle in the UK to stop his extradition to Cape Town to be tried for his wife’s murder.
Besides hiring a top South African legal firm, which has consulted with a leading criminal advocate, Dewani’s family has retained the services of an ace detective in Cape Town.
The huge costs of running a two-pronged legal strategy in two countries explains the silence of Dewani’s verbose R200000-a-month publicist, Max Clifford, who confirmed to The New Age that he had not billed the Dewanis for six months.
“The family paid me for three months after the murder. Since March, I’ve not billed them because I know their situation,” he said.
Dewani’s move to mount a defence in South Africa began in earnest in February, following a brief flirtation with celebrity attorney Billy Gundelfinger, who was hired two weeks after Anni Dewani’s murder.
Newlywed Anni’s body was found in the back of an abandoned taxi in Khayelitsha on November 13, with a single bullet wound in her neck, after an earlier hijacking.
Gundelfinger withdrew from the case a week later and was replaced by Taswell Papier, a director at Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs (ENS), one of South Africa’s leading law firms.
Although he has 22 years’ experience as a lawyer, Papier practises as an attorney in ENS’s corporate commercial department.
ENS spokesperson Rochelle Bricout confirmed that the firm was representing Dewani, but declined to comment on the case, or on Papier’s criminal law experience.
But an informed legal source confirmed that Papier was hired by Dewani’s father, Prakash, a prominent Bristol businessman and magistrate, and that he was paid an upfront R100000 retainer.
The New Age has established that Papier has spent a significant amount of time researching the case. Although his billable hours on the case are not known, Papier’s normal rate is R3500 an hour.
He has also flown to the UK at least twice to consult with Dewani and his family, and he attended Dewani’s last extradition hearing in the Belmarsh Magistrate’s Court.
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And in early March, Papier also retained the services of leading private investigators Brooke International, who are based in Bellville, in Cape Town.
The firm boasts a high success rate. It frequently uses former police detectives to conduct important investigations.
Sources at the Cape Town Bar have confirmed that Papier has consulted one of South Africa’s most experienced criminal advocates, Francois van Zyl SC, several times.
Van Zyl, who was lead counsel for Schabir Shaik in his 2004 fraud and corruption trial, charges between R18000 and R25000 a day for his services.
Van Zyl is currently defending UK banker and convicted stalker Shumsheer Ghumman in the Cape Town Regional Court on charges that include hiring a Dewani-type hitman to kill the father of the woman he has been pursuing.
He has also appeared in several high-profile cases, including defending three of the accused in the Masterbond case, the accountant of Allan Boesak’s Foundation for Peace and Justice, Freddie Steenkamp, and he was also one of several senior counsel who appeared for German fraudster Jörgen Harksen during his almost decade-long extradition battle.
A source at the Bar said Papier and his team would be laying the groundwork for a trial now, “otherwise if Dewani was extradited two years from now, where are you going to start? Then all you would have is what the state has to tell the court”.
Brooke International yesterday refused to comment on their involvement in the case.
