Hassan Ebrahim Kajee, an advocate who charged the state R67k a day for 511 days, has been disbarred by Johannesburg High Court judges Motsomai Makume and Willem Wepener. Kajee was accused of fraudulent misconduct for settling a civil matter involving the Minister of Police before the High Court in 2018. The Johannesburg Society of Advocates brought an application to court for him to be suspended from practice, but he did not comply. This resulted in the application that he be struck from the roll, which came before judges Macume and Wepener. Kajee had shown no remorse and was still insisting that the Johannesburg Bar Council had no jurisdiction over him because he had resigned.
He had also disobeyed a court order that he submit billing information to the council’s professional ethics committee. The judgment against the Minister of Police had been rescinded by Judge Raylene Keightley in October 2019. She had also made scathing comments about Kajee saying he and the attorney were facing serious investigation by different authorities regarding allegations of unprofessional, fraudulent and corrupt conduct. The nub of the complaint against Kajee was that he received the R34-million as fees from 1 April 2017 to 24 August 2018. The judges said the nub of the complaint was that he received the R34-million as fees from 1 April 2017 to 24 August 2018.
The judges said the previous court rulings showed that Kajee was guilty of fraudulent conduct. The founding affidavit by the Minister of Police set out clear incidents where there were settlements in matters where no instruction had been sourced or agreed to by the department. The payment of the sum of R34-million to him by the office of the State Attorney resulted from a corrupt relationship. Kajee has been charged criminally with fraud and the Special Investigating Unit has taken action against him to recover money he stole through inflating invoices and submitting fake invoices. The judges noted that the invoices submitted by Kajee were not “tax invoices”, meaning he was not registered as a VAT vendor and had withheld tax.
The Minister of Police had also incurred losses resulting from Kajee’s unauthorised settlements. Kajee has been charged criminally with fraud and the Special Investigating Unit has taken action against him to recover money he stole.
