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- A former bodyguard of the ANC Secretary General, Ace Magashule, was found guilty of stealing a painting from Pierneef worth around R8 million.
- Ricardo Mettler claimed that Magashule gave him the painting as a gift.
- The court found that Mettler knew the painting was valuable and did everything possible to conceal that it was a state asset.
Ricardo Mettler, a former bodyguard for Ace Magashule, learned he was stealing a valuable Pierneef painting the day he took it, along with Magashule’s personal belongings, from the Free State Prime Minister’s office in the OR Tambo building in Bloemfontein, Judge Soma Naidoo ruled. the Superior Court of the Free State on Thursday.
She ruled that the painting was never a gift from Magashule to him, as Mettler claimed in his plea and to several people after it was discovered in late August 2018 that it had been stolen.
Mettler, 43, who had been released following a warning since March this year, is now behind bars after being convicted of theft, money laundering, fraud and making a false statement to police by Naidoo. Thursday. You are due to appear in court again on Tuesday for a possible request for bail and the filing of a preliminary report by a social worker about your domestic circumstances.
Sentencing proceedings will likely only start next year.
Mettler stole the painting in March 2018 while helping to vacate the office of Magashule, who is now the secretary general of the ANC.
Naidoo discovered that Mettler had removed the barcode from the back of the painting, a state asset, and then covered it with brown paper.
READ | Pierneef Painting: What You Need To Know About Ace Magashule’s Former Bodyguard Theft Case
“I say that he had the reason to do it to disguise the brand and avoid questions about it.”
Although he denied knowing the value of the painting, he already knew it was valuable on March 27, 2018, when he offered it as collateral to a Chinese businessman in the city, Wei-Lun Hsu, for a loan of between R2 million and R3. million.
The fake painting was a gift
He used Wei-Lun as a “go-between” to sell the painting and also pretended that the painting was a gift.
He used Wei-Lun to try to avoid prosecution. He also wrote a letter saying that the painting was a gift and pretended to Wei-Lun that the letter was from the prime minister’s office. Magashule just had to sign it.
Representing a mountainous landscape in the Free State, the undated Pierneef belongs to the Free State government.
The description of the painting “with a gold frame” was vague enough to give him as much room to maneuver as possible, had he been asked about it, the judge said.
He also made a statement to the police in September 2018 in which he claimed that the painting was a gift, although he knew that it had already been reported as stolen.
READ ALSO | What happened to the Pierneef painting that disappeared from Ace Magashule’s office?
Naidoo said some of the female staff in the prime minister’s office did not tell the court everything they knew. They “conveniently denied knowledge of certain things” or testified that they could not remember.
He said that some of them were lax in their duties with the assets of the province.
Naidoo said that had it not been for the mindfulness of Marius Jansen, an architect with the province’s Department of Public Works and an art lover, the provincial government would never have taken the Pierneef back.
Read the original article in Afrikaans here.
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