NATIONAL NEWS - The Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) has gone after the money Christopher Panayiotou allegedly paid a former employee to take out a hit on his wife.
The state attorney wants this money, as well as the cash Panayiotou, 30, allegedly gave to the self-confessed middleman to disappear after the murder, forfeited.
AFU investigating officer Warrant Officer Clinton Brown said Luthando Siyoni, 36, was a lowly paid employee of Panayiotou’s and the only conceivable reason for his former boss to give him this amount of money – about R80 000 – was clearly to effect the hit on his wife, Jayde.
“The property was clearly proceeds or an instrumentality of a conspiracy to commit murder,” court papers before the Port Elizabeth High Court state.
When police arrested Siyoni shortly after Jayde’s murder in April 2015, they confiscated R31 300 in cash. At the time, Siyoni alleged this was his cut in the R80 000 Panayiotou paid him to organise hitmen to kidnap and kill his wife.
The remaining cash was allegedly paid over to now deceased suspected hitman, Sizwezakhe Vumazonke.
The state claims further that Panayiotou then paid Siyoni a further R4 550 during a sting operation which is the subject of a trial-within-atrial.
