HISTORY OF SHABBY DEALINGS WITH SCHABIR SHAIK – MEMO

Former president Jacob Zuma’s prosecutors say the only victim of the state’s failure to charge him with corruption 15 years ago was the “rule of law”

Former President Jacob Zuma’s prosecutors say the only victim of the state’s failure to charge him with corruption 15 years ago was the “rule of law” – as he would have been convicted if he’d been put on trial with his former financial advisor Schabir Shaik.

And confidential NPA documentation now reveals they were not convinced by claims by Zuma’s former lawyer Michael Hulley that he did not intend to act corruptly when he signed a “revolving loan agreement” with Shaik, through which he received millions of rands in payments.

“Mr Zuma is no ordinary man. He is hailed to have been the commander of the African National Congress intelligence services. The unit was at the centre of cracking the defensive strategies of the apartheid regime,” a February 2018 memo prepared for then prosecutions boss Shaun Abrahams states.

“His intellectual ability cannot be doubted, not to have realised that Mr Shaik was (greasing) him, in order to get favours, from Mr Zuma’s political standing.”

The memo, signed by KwaZulu-Natal deputy director of public prosecutions Moipone Noko and lead Zuma prosecutor Billy Downer, was written in response to Zuma’s final bid to persuade Abrahams not to pursue the corruption case against him.

One of Zuma’s primary arguments to Abrahams, which also emerges strongly in his upcoming application for a permanent stay of prosecution, is that he should have been charged with Shaik by in 2003, so that he could have exercised his right to cross-examine Shaik and cleared his name.

Zuma’s prosecutors told Abrahams they did not buy that argument.

“The decision not to prosecute Mr Zuma [by then acting NDPP Mokotedi Mpshe] was advantageous to him in that he remains innocent to date and was able to ascend to the highest office in the land. A conviction for corruption would have prevented such an ascension.

“The victim of such decision was not Mr Zuma, but the administration of justice and the rule of law.”

The memo is adamant that, had Zuma been tried with Shaik, he “would have been convicted”.

Zuma’s application for a permanent stay of prosecution is due to be heard in May.

Picture: POOL VIA REUTERS / NIC BOTHMA FIGHTING ON: Former president Jacob Zuma in the KwaZulu-Natal high court in Durban last year. Zuma is fighting efforts to charge him with corruption.