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- The Public Protector has found that Ace Magashule and Mosebenzi Zwane did not exercise their constitutional oversight responsibilities and are guilty of misconduct and mismanagement in connection with the Vrede project.
- Magashule insisted that the Free State government needed to keep paying Estina linked to Gupta even though her contract was canceled.
- Busisiwe Mkhwebane has forwarded his report to the Hawks for further investigation, while the NPA Directorate of Investigation continues to investigate the Vrede saga.
ANC Secretary General and former Free State Prime Minister Ace Magashule criticized Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s “stubborn persistence” that he should be held accountable for the Vrede dairy farm project scandal as the “height of irrationality” .
Mkhwebane, in turn, has described Magashule’s “continued denials” of responsibility and knowledge of the project and its funding as “alarming”, given that he was the Prime Minister of the Free State at the time when $ 20 million in Public money earmarked for black dairy farmers was looted, allegedly, in part, to finance a lavish Gupta family wedding.
The confrontation between the two is exposed in Mkhwebane’s second report on the Vrede saga, which he produced after his first report was determined to be illegal and unconstitutional and was overturned.
In that second report, and in stark contrast to his first investigation, Mkhwebane finds that the “evidence that I considered in reaching my conclusion confirms the presence of outside involvement and undue influence of people with ties to the Gupta family over politicians in the way that the project was conceptualized and implemented. “
READ | Mkhwebane on the Vrede dairy project: Ace Magashule and company ‘failed’ to hold state functions accountable
The Public Protector also found that Magashule, who served as Prime Minister of the Free State between 2009 and 2018, and the former MEC of Agriculture of the Free State, Mosebenzi Zwane, failed to exercise their constitutional oversight responsibilities and were guilty of misconduct and misconduct. administration in relation to the project.
In his response to a formal notification from Mkhwebane that he had been involved in his second investigation into the Vrede project, Magashule has criticized these findings as “speculative and spurious deductions” and insists that there is no evidence to support this. He has also strongly suggested that he will review the Vrede report.
In a finding that may have implications for the currently dormant criminal prosecution of those implicated in the Vrede scandal, Mkhwebane found that there was evidence showing that the Free State provincial executive council “improperly allocated funds” to pay Estina, even after that the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development had canceled his contract.
Magashule, however, maintains that, despite this and the fact that both the Treasury and the Auditor General had expressed concern about serious irregularities in the agreement, the province was “obliged to continue paying for Estina.”
Estina reportedly received another R130 million in payments from the Free State between December 2014 and May 2016, all under the supervision of Magashule.
This, he told Mkhwebane, was because “at no time was the Estina project reviewed and put aside” and the contracts between it and the Free State government remained in force.
The ANC general secretary also insists that the public protector did not have the right to investigate the saga because it went beyond the normal two-year limit imposed on her office to investigate alleged state abuses and maintains that she has not demonstrated any “exceptional circumstances.” that justify it by investigating the 2012 project.
Mkhwebane, however, maintains that his decision to pursue Vrede’s second investigation was justified, given the “allegations made, regarding the involvement of politicians in the misuse of public funds, and the harm suffered by the beneficiaries who without undoubtedly still continues, and therefore needed to be directed to the purpose.
Furthermore, he noted that when he interviewed Magashule about Vrede in October 2018, he “raised no objection to my jurisdiction in the investigation of this matter.”
She has forwarded her report to the Hawks to “establish whether any act of impropriety identified in this document amounts to acts of criminal conduct in terms of the Corrupt Activities Prevention and Combat Act.”
Magashule’s claims of non-participation in the Vrede project also appear to be at odds with its proud announcement in its 2012 state of the province address that it would “create 150 additional jobs.”
It was also Magashule who in 2011 authorized the Estina-Vrede dairy project, which was never budgeted, was not preceded by any type of feasibility study, did not involve a competitive bidding process and was defined by materially fraudulent representations and non-delivery. by Estina.
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