Hawks wanted to ‘humiliate’ minister, say lawyers
EMBATTLED Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s lawyers have refuted allegations by senior ANC figures that he has failed to co-operate with the Hawks’s investigation into a SARS intelligence unit and considered himself above the law.
“Nothing can be further from the truth. The minister responded fully to all the Hawks’ enquiries, offered to provide any further assistance they might require, and scrupulously acted in accordance with the law. The facts are these,” law firm Gildenhuys Malatji said.
It said Gordhan responded in full to a list of 27 questions sent to him in February, shortly before he tabled the national budget, and has since continued to co-operate with the probe. However, he will not play along with attempts by the Hawks to “humiliate” him.
The law firm said when media reports surfaced in May that the Hawks were investigating charges against him, they inquired from the unit whether this was, in fact, the case.
“General (Berning) Ntlemeza, the head of the Hawks, explicitly denied the rumour in a letter dated 20 May 2016,” they said.
It was therefore surprising when “we received a letter from the Hawks out of the blue on Monday, 22 August 2016” demanding that Gordhan present himself to the Hawks’s offices to make a warning statement about the so-called SARS rogue spy unit, and the early retirement and re-appointment of the Deputy Commissioner of SARS Mr Ivan Pillay.
Gildenhuys Malatji said Gordhan immediately responded to the Hawks’s questions in full, in writing, and took advice from senior counsel on the legal issues raised by the investigators.
“The minister also requested us to address the legal issues raised by the Hawks. We did so on the advice of senior counsel in a letter to the Hawks on 24 August 2016.
“We made the point that, on any version of the facts, the assertions of law on which the Hawks based their accusations against the minister were wholly unfounded and indeed scurrilous.”
The letter also made clear, Gordhan’s lawyers said, that he was ready to provide any further assistance to the investigators they might require, but the Hawks had yet to take him up on this offer.
They said Gordhan did not report to the Hawks’s offices last Thursday for “a range of good reasons”, the first being that he was not required in law to do so.
“A ‘warning statement’ is merely an opportunity afforded to a suspect to give his or her side of the story. But it is entirely optional... It was in the second place absurd to invite the minister to make a ‘warning statement’. He had already given a full account of his side of the story.”
Gordhan’s lawyers went on to accuse the Hawks of handling the case in a manner that seemed designed to humiliate him and hinted at a political agenda.
Summonsing him to their offices in a letter, also released to the media, resulted in reports that his arrest was imminent, they recalled.
“The Hawks did nothing to dampen the media frenzy. On the contrary, their handling of the matter seemed to have been designed to trigger a media event to humiliate the minister by demonstrating in a glare of publicity how the Hawks have brought him to heel. The minister was not prepared to play along with that agenda,” the lawyers said.