Lawyers stand up for Stag and kid
Stag Cronjé, DA Portfolio Councillor for Finance, is again under scrutiny after Council appointed a special committee to investigate his involvement in a R350-million municipal investment with Old Mutual (OM) in 2017.
This follows after the report of a forensic investigation conducted by FTI Consulting served in Council last week. FTI found that Cronjé was indeed in breach of the Code of Conduct for Councillors.
The services of the consulting firm was procured after an allegation was made regarding the possible involvement of Cronjé’s son, Daniël, with a municipal investment scheme at Old Mutual. Cronjé was accused of failing to disclose full particulars of the benefit obtained by his son to Council, as required by the Code of Conduct for Councillors.
The committee - two DA councillors and one ANC councillor - will report back to Council within 90 days.
Icosa Councillor Wilbur Harris said he made a point of asking for a set time frame in which the council committee should report their findings. “We don’t want the same situation where we wait for ever, as is the case with the feedback regarding the investigation into Councillor Cecil Noble’s alleged electricity theft.”
Legal response
In response to the allegations, Stag Cronjé’s attorneys, Brand & Van der Bergh, stated in a letter dated 15 January 2020 that the finding of the FTI Consulting report is “patently wrong” - in fact, as well as in law and that Council shouldn’t take further steps in this regard.
Item 5(2) of the Code of Conduct for Councillors requires that a councillor must disclose any benefit which a close family member acquires directly from a contract concluded with the municipality.
The letter states that Cronjé jr did not conclude a contract with the municipality itself. The mere fact that Cronjé jr referred Old Mutual to the municipality and that this led to an agreement between Old Mutual and the municipality (of which Cronjé jr was no party), does not constitute a contract between Cronjé jr and the municipality.
They further said that Old Mutual’s decision to pay Cronjé jr a referral fee stands apart from the contract between Old Mutual and the municipality. The letter further says that Old Mutual’s internal investigators were never contacted by the investigator, “despite them being the ones who engaged with Cronjé as well as Cronjé jr”. Cronjé’s lawyers
The letter states that Cronjé jr did not conclude a contract with the municipality itself.
argued that the fact that the Auditor General (AG) removed Cronjé’s name from an item of the financial statements that dealt with irregularities, is clear evidence that the AG was satisfied, after proper investigation, that there was no obligation to declare.