Old crook up to new tricks

OOM Dries Marais is old and he looks tired. He comes across as a stuttering mess with no more than a Grade 6 education – and many have fallen victim to this facade that he has mastered since his first run-in with the law 38 years ago.

In reality Marais, or just "Oom" as he has become known in legal circles, masterminded massive multimillion- rand scams in the past – and nearly got away with them.

A Cape Town magistrate even described him as "extremely intelligent" and "one of the most devious people the court has had the displeasure in coming across".

The law finally caught up to him in 2011 and he is now serving an eight-year sentence in Bellville Prison in the Western Cape.

In that matter, the 74-year-old was found guilty of selling and reselling fixed property that did not belong to him at Kini Bay near Port Elizabeth and De Vlei farm near Stellenbosch.

His children, a son and a daughter, were charged with him but escaped with suspended sentences.

Marais worked from a tender age to support his mother and six siblings.

According to a report in The Herald in 2004, Marais, a builder by trade, first came into the public eye in 1976 when a director of a finance company obtained an interdict against him for allegedly repeatedly threatening to kill him.

This happened after the company tried to repossess 10 tip trucks. Later that year, Marais allegedly ordered his workers to "clean" the vehicles with diesel and "accidentally" set them alight.

Although Marais was initially convicted of malicious damage to property, this was later set aside and he was instead found guilty of defeating the ends of justice.

In 1980, he was sentenced to five years in prison for charges arising from the collapse of his construction company.

In 1993, Adrian Gardiner obtained an interdict against Marais following death and mutilation threats.

The following year, Marais was to be rearrested for breaching the interdict but escaped from waiting policemen through the bathroom window in his Port Elizabeth home. He spent five months on the run before he was eventually arrested in Nature's Valley.

Cape Town officials will transport Marais back to Port Elizabeth later this month when he is expected to appear in the Commercial Crimes Court on charges relating to the theft of Transnet railway lines. Further charges include forgery, fraud, theft, attempting to defeat the ends of justice, perjury and uttering. - Kathryn Kimberley