Breytenbach ‘deleted Kumba file in error’

Former senior state prosecutor and now DA MP Glynnis Breytenbach told the High Court in Pretoria yesterday she had only deleted files from her National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) work laptop to protect her privacy.

Prosecutor Raymond Mathenjwa asked Breytenbach if the deleted documents were not the NPA’s official information. Breytenbach said some of the documents belonged to the police, but they were not the NPA’s official documents.

Mathenjwa said evidence previously presented in court stated there were more than 41 folders on the laptop and Breytenbach hired an expert to delete 13 folders. “What criteria did you use to select those that were deleted?” he asked.

She said: “I did it very quickly. I used the criteria of what I viewed as personal or private information.”

Mathenjwa said that evidence on record stated that Breytenbach deleted the Kumba Iron Ore versus Imperial Crown Trading (ICT) folders because the information was readily available elsewhere.

Breytenbach insisted she only intended to delete personal information “without knowing that they [the Kumba Iron Ore versus ICT folders]” were there.

Earlier, she told the court if she had been on a mission to destroy evidence on the NPA laptop, she would have “poured coffee on it or arranged for it to be stolen”.

In June, Magistrate Brian Nemavhidi acquitted Breytenbach and her former attorney Johan Wagenaar on two counts of defeating the ends of justice for deleting information from the NPA laptop while she was on suspension in 2012. They are still in court on four charges of contravening Section 40 A of the NPA Act, which prohibits unauthorised modification of official computer content. –