Tony Yengeni found guilty of drunken driving
The ANC bigwig's defence that he was unfairly singled out for special treatment in having his blood tested rapidly by Cape Town police labs has not paid off.
FILE PICTURE: Tony Yengeni. Picture: Ayi Leshabane.
African National Congress (ANC) veteran Tony Yengeni was found guilty of drunken driving by the Cape Town Regional Court on Friday.
The ANC national executive committee member was found guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol by Magistrate Grant Engel.
However, Engel didn’t find Yengeni guilty on a charge of reckless or negligent driving.
He was arrested in August 12 2013 while driving his white Maserati in Green Point. Traffic police said he had been driving “erratically” at the time.
Yengeni has insisted that he had just three sips of African beer on the day of his arrest and that he was not intoxicated. However, his blood alcohol showed he was five times over the legal limit.
This was the second time drunk driving charges were levelled against Yengeni. In 2007, he was acquitted on those charges.
He had earlier alleged that there was political influence in his drunk driving case. Coupled with the fact that tests to determine his blood-alcohol level were fast-tracked, had led him to suspect “something’s cooking here” and “there’s a conspiracy”.
When the results of his blood alcohol tests were ready within two weeks, he said he became “suspicious” after he had been told there was meant to be a backlog.
His attempts to disallow his blood tests for this reason were not successful.
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