Eight years since his arrest, and after spending more than two years behind bars, Julian Brown once labelled Gqeberha’s perlemoen kingpin is finally a free man.
From running a multimillion-rand empire to walking out of prison without even a pair of shoes to his name, convicted perlemoen kingpin Julian Brown was stripped of everything he had when he was jailed for racketeering.
“Not guilty” were the words uttered in succession by the men and women accused of siphoning off millions of rand meant for Nelson Mandela Bay’s now defunct Integrated Public Transport System (IPTS) as they were asked to plead to the charges on Tuesday.
A bid by embattled Gqeberha businesswoman Andrea Wessels to stop her former lawyer from representing her co-accused in a multimillion-rand racketeering case citing a conflict of interest was short-lived when the application was abandoned at the final hour on Monday.