News Articles

Fireblade customs service up, running

Source: The Citizen, 05/01/2018


In terms of a court order granted by consent, Home Affairs agreed to
immediately give effect to a ruling that the department must provide an
immigration service to international travellers at Fireblade’s
terminal.
Super rich and famous international travellers using private aircraft
no longer have to brave the immigration queues at Johannesburg’s OR
Tambo International Airport despite a pending bid in the Constitutional
Court to stop the Oppenheimer family’s Fireblade Aviation from offering
exclusive customs and immigration services to them.
The minister and director-general of Home Affairs late last month
capitulated and undertook to give effect to a series of court orders
allowing Fireblade to render an exclusive customs and immigration
service to international VIPs at their seven-star reception centre at
OR Tambo.
This was after a full bench of the High Court in Pretoria shortly
before Christmas dismissed the minister’s appeal against an enforcement
order and a subsequent urgent application by Fireblade to have Home
Affairs Minister Ayanda Dlodlo and DirectorGeneral Mkhuseli Apleni
jailed for contempt of court for ignoring the court order.
In terms of a court order granted by consent, Home Affairs agreed to
immediately give effect to a ruling by Judge Sulet Potterill that the
department must provide an immigration service to international
travellers at Fireblade’s terminal at OR Tambo.
The department’s undertaking will remain in place pending the final
determination of the minister and director-general’s pending
application in the Constitutional Court.
Judge Potterill ruled in October that one of Dlodlo’s predecessors,
Malusi Gibaba (now the country’s finance minister), had granted
permission for the department to run an immigration service at
Fireblade’s OR Tambo terminal and that Fireblade could implement the
decision.


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