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Shuttleworth applies for cross-appeal in R250m case

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 08 Mar 2015

Technology billionaire Mark Shuttleworth has applied to cross-appeal in the Constitutional Court if the South African Reserve Bank is granted the leave to appeal it seeks, Business Times reports.

On Tuesday the court reserved judgment in the bank's application for leave to appeal a Supreme Court judgment in favour of Shuttleworth last year.

The verdict, given in October, granted the tech entrepreneur Shuttleworth the right to the R250 million levy he was forced to forfeit in 2009 when he emigrated, repatriating R4 billion from SA to the Isle of Man.

In 2013, the North Gauteng High Court dismissed Shuttleworth's application to have a section of the Currency and Exchange Act and all of the Exchange Control Regulations struck down.

Shuttleworth had argued that exchange controls prejudice small businesses and individuals, preventing South African citizens and residents from managing their finances in a global economy, without providing the state with meaningful control over the value of the rand.

The Sunday newspaper cites Stuart Theobald, MD of Leriba Consulting, as saying South African business had been "constrained by administrative requirements relating to exchange control regulations".

The tech entrepreneur billionaire founded Thawte and sold it to VeriSign for $575 million in 1999, before founding venture fund HBD and setting up the Shuttleworth Foundation, which funds change in society.

In April 2002, he flew into space, as a cosmonaut member of the crew of the Russian Soyuz mission TM34, to the International Space Station, and subsequently developed Ubuntu.

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