Apology to minister Pravin Gordhan

PRESS ombudsman Johan Retief has ordered us to apologise to Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan for failing to give him the right of reply in “Call to probe Pravin over SARS spy saga” published on October 4.

Retief said we were in breach of the press code for not giving Gordhan enough time to respond to questions about the findings in a KPMG document on which we reported. We also failed to ask him to respond to comments made by former South African Revenue Service commissioner Oupa Magashula. Magashula said Gordhan should take the blame for the “fruitless and wasteful expenditure” incurred by the SARS rogue unit. He also said Gordhan, who was finance minister at the time, told him deputy commissioner Ivan Pillay wanted to join his family in the Netherlands and that SARS could not afford to lose him. “Pravin suggested that I approve his early retirement and then offer Pillay a three-year contract which he, as [the] minister I was reporting to, was going to approve. It was Pravin who approved everything.”

We accept we were in breach of the code in this regard, and apologise to Gordhan for failing to seek his comment ahead of publication.

Gordhan has since pointed out that neither KPMG nor any other panel that has investigated the unit in question ever interviewed him, and he had not seen the KPMG report. He also objected to any suggestion or insinuation that he knew of any illegal activity on the part of the national research unit.

Retief made several other findings against us, which we intend to appeal. Visit presscouncil.org.za for the full finding.