Peet Viljoen: From celebrity lawyer to accused in a R27m land fraud case
While former celebrity lawyer Peet Viljoen will appear in court on Friday, 26 June to fight for release on bail, his wife Melany Viljoen described him on social media as someone with “a heart of gold, the spirit of a lion, and a gentle giant”.
In an interview more than 14 years ago, shortly after he was disbarred as an attorney, Viljoen described himself as just a good, hard-working lawyer who earned his millions honestly. He said at the time: “Yes, I am rich, but I earned my money. I don’t drink, I don’t use drugs and I am home every day at 4:30 pm with my (then wife) and three children.”
But in 2011, Judge Ephraim Makgoba ended Viljoen’s legal career after hearing submissions from the then Law Society of the Northern Province on why Viljoen should be disbarred, and from Viljoen on why his name should not be struck off the roll.
The judge concluded that in the interest of the law profession and the public, Viljoen should no longer practise as an attorney. The law society, in its complaints against Viljoen, referred to his conduct in many instances as “mafia-like”.
Apart from being implicated in the misappropriation of trust funds running into millions of rand, it is also claimed that Viljoen intimidated and threatened some of his clients.
In an interview shortly after he was disbarred, Viljoen vowed to fight back. He said at the time: “I will make this right on appeal. Appeal court judges do not bother with emotions; they only look at the facts.”
Viljoen was of the opinion that the two high court judges were wrong in finding that he was not a man of good standing. The complaints against him included one by former Springbok rugby player James (“Bullet”) Dalton, one by singer Steve Hofmeyr, and a complaint by a former business associate and former “best friend” Visser du Plessis. They all complained that they were done in by Viljoen. Most were erstwhile clients of Viljoen, who was known as a celebrity lawyer because he represented many of the big names in the country.
Viljoen was not only confident that he would be able to save his legal career by turning to the appeal court, but he was also confident that the Director of Public Prosecutions would withdraw charges of fraud and racketeering against him in the same case he is now facing, involving the alleged fraudulent transfer of millions of rand worth of City of Johannesburg (CoJ) land. Viljoen maintained that he is not guilty of any wrongdoing regarding these property deals. “I was, in fact, the whistleblower,” he said during the 2011 interview.
He was at the time also arrested by the Hawks regarding these property deals and had to spend seven nights in jail before he was released on bail. These charges came back to haunt him after he was arrested on June 16 on the same charges when he landed at OR Tambo International Airport after he was kicked out of the United States.
He swapped his ICE detention camp in the US for a two-night stint in the Sunnyside Police Station. He will remain at Kgosi Mampuru II Prison in Pretoria until at least Friday, when he will launch a formal bail application before the Specialised Commercial Crimes Court.
Viljoen’s legal team is expected to face an uphill battle, with prosecutor Willem van Zyl telling the court on Friday that the State will oppose bail. Van Zyl said the charges – corruption, fraud, theft, perjury, and forgery – all fall under Schedule 5 as they involved millions. This makes it a higher threshold in obtaining bail. He also intimated that he would use some of Viljoen’s own social media posts during the bail proceedings.
The 400 charges against him relate to an alleged R27 million scheme in which 46 properties belonging to the CoJ were allegedly fraudulently sold between January and March 2010.
