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Mkhwebane’s charge sheet states that the perjury charges relate to his investigation into an apartheid-era “lifeboat” loan agreement between the Reserve Bank of South Africa (SARB) and the now-defunct Bankorp, which later was taken over by Absa. In 2010, a complaint about the lifeboat deal was filed with the public protector’s office, and Mkhwebane took over the investigation when she was appointed in October 2016.
About two months after his appointment, the charge sheet says, Mkhwebane sent his interim report to the parties – which included then-President Jacob Zuma along with the Reserve Bank and Absa – to “respond to his finding that the SARB could not recover the R1.125bn funds from Absa ”.
The following year, it published its final report in which it found that the government and the Reserve Bank “were unable to recover R3.2bn from Bankorp and / or Absa”, and ordered parliament to “strip the SARB of its main objective. to protect the value of the currency ”, and reopen a 1998 investigation by the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) into the matter.
The Reserve Bank, Absa, the Treasury and the Minister of Finance subsequently submitted a joint request to the high court to overturn Mkhwebane’s corrective action, a case they won in February 2018.
Mkhwebane requested permission to appeal the sentence and was denied. He then appealed to the Constitutional Court, which found that he was dishonest in his conduct in the saga, after which Hoffman filed the perjury complaint against him.
It is the affidavits attached to these cases that Mkhwebane testified to, and in which the state alleges he lied, that form the basis of the perjury case for which he must now appear in court.
“On approximately November 24, 2017 … [ Mkhwebane] illegally and intentionally under oath deposed to an affidavit of response … in which he stated that he only had one meeting with the president [Zuma] which was on April 25, 2017, knowing that the statement was false, ”says the charge sheet that explains the first charge of perjury.
The second charge relates to an affidavit Mkhwebane declared dated April 2018 “in which he stated that he had a second meeting with the President [Zuma] on June 7, 2017 and that its purpose was to clarify the president’s response to the interim report, knowing that the stated purpose was not correct ”.
On the third charge, the charge sheet states that in a June 2018 affidavit, Mkhwebane allegedly “stated that he did not discuss the final report / new corrective action with the president on June 7, 2017, knowing it was not true” .
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