Mahlobo denies being fingered in report

FORMER state security minister David Mahlobo yesterday denied the highlevel review panel report into the State Security Agency (SSA) fingered him.

The panel, appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa and led by former minister Sydney Mufamadi, found that there had been a serious politicisation and factionalisation of the intelligence community over the past decade based on factions in the ruling party, in violation of the Constitution. The report also fingers then president Jacob Zuma.

It recommends criminal prosecution, saying: “Arising out of investigations following from this review and current or future investigations by the Inspector-General of Intelligence, there should be firm consequences for those who issued manifestly illegal orders and those who wittingly carried them out.”

Mahlobo said the difficulty in commenting on the report was that the version released to the public did not make direct references to any persons.

Mahlobo insisted that the report did not implicate him other than making general observations and that some in the media had tried to deduce names. Mahlobo was the state security minister during some of the periods of tenure cited in the report. The other minister was Siyabonga Cwele. The report finds they were complicit in “executive overspill”. Cwele would not comment.

The panel report said the civilian intelligence community was turned into a private resource to serve the political and personal interests of particular individuals.

“The growing contagion of the civilian intelligence community by the factionalism in the ANC progressively worsened from 2009.” The report called

“firm consequences for those who issued manifestly illegal orders and those who wittingly carried them out.

“Members of the SSA in particular, as well as senior politicians, have been in breach of the constitutional provisions regarding obeying a manifestly illegal order and the injunction not to further the interests of any political party in a partisan manner.”

The panel also found failure to implement financial controls.“A key element of this is the fact that most of the operational financial transactions of the agency are done by means of cash.”

The report also called for forensic and other investigations into the breaches of financial and other controls identified by some of the information available to the panel and other investigations, especially with regard to the Principal Agent Network project headed by former director-general Arthur Fraser and special operations.

The ANC has welcomed the report .