Article from News24:-
01/03/2001 17:20 - (SA)
Warrant of arrest for SAA pilot
Pretoria - A warrant of arrest was on Thursday authorised in the Commercial Crimes Court in Pretoria for a former SA Airways pilot convicted of buying licence examination papers.
Issayah Dominicus Nombo, 42, was supposed to be sentenced on Thursday, but had not arrived at the court by 9.30am.
His bail was also provisionally retracted and Magistrate Mario Jungbluth ordered that March 15 be the return date.
Jungbluth last month convicted Nombo on charges of fraud and corruption relating to the buying of Airline Transport Pilot's licence (ATPL) examination papers, and acquitted him on three more charges.
Brandon Harris, formerly an official at the Department of Transport, testified he had sold the examination papers for the ATPL, which a pilot needs to serve as a captain on an international airline, to Nombo in 1997 for R7 000.
He also ensured that Nombo wrote that same set of papers, and when he failed one of them, sold another to him for R500.
- Suspended Civil Aviation Authority chief executive officer Trevor Abrahams also briefly appeared in the court on Thursday on charges related to the buying and selling of examination papers.
State advocate Sonia le Roux requested a postponement to March 15 for a decision by the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions (NDPP).
Defence counsel Gys Rautenbach had no objection to the postponement, although he pointed out that the postponement would be the third in anticipation of the NDPP's decision on the matter.
He said the defence had earlier asked for a postponement to allow it to approach the NDPP to request an early trial date and to make representations to have all charges against Abrahams withdrawn.
When a charge sheet was initially handed to Abrahams in November, it contained 18 charges, Rautenbach said.
The magistrate granted the postponement. - Sapa