Kimberley – A judge has denied wanting to protect corruption-accused Northern Cape ANC leader John Block, the City Press reported.

“I have never been a friend of John Block and I am not his friend now,” Kimberley Regional Court president Khandilizwe Nqadala  told the newspaper.

He refuted an allegation that he had been friendly with Block, before he presided over a corruption case involving Block in 2006.

The claim that Nqadala wanted to protect Block is contained in a  preliminary investigation report by two magistrates into a complaint of judicial misconduct against Nqadala.

The complaint against Nqadala was later dropped due to insufficient evidence.

In the report, Vincent Mayisela, an attorney, alleges that Nqadala once mentioned the John Block case – which had not yet been  heard – to him in an informal conversation.

“(He) remarked that he cannot allow the chairperson of the ANC to go to jail,” Mayisela is quoted as saying in the prelimary report.

The 2006 court case related to a visit Block paid to a jazz festival allegedly at the expense of taxpayers. Block was acquitted.

A new graft trial of Block and seven others will begin in the Northern Cape High Court on October 28.

They are accused of fraud, corruption and money-laundering, allegedly involving R49 million, between May 2005 and December 2009. – Sapa