Lawyers may sue Maimane

In a press statement released yesterday, law firm EFG Incorporated hit back at allegations made against it by Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane.

It claims he was completely misguided and will now have to face a lawsuit from it for defamation.

Maimane claimed his party had confirmed that the law firm had links to the Guptas and had been administering the “slush fund” from which R500 000 reached President Cyril Ramaphosa’s campaign team last year.

Maimane brought attention to the Bosasa (now African Global Operations) donation through a question to Ramaphosa in parliament earlier this month.

Maimane claimed: “The slush fund used to raise money for Cyril Ramaphosa’s election campaign to become ANC president – which included the R500 000 ‘donation’ from Bosasa – was administered by a law firm whose director appears to have links to the Guptas and their state capture project.”

He said a trust account named “efg2”, administered by law firm Edelstein, Farber and Grobler (EFG), was the account through which the R500 000 was “funnelled”, “as admitted by the president in his letter to the speaker of parliament.

“This follows his about-turn to my question in parliament about this R500 000 payment – which Ramaphosa initially stated was a payment to his son Andile for consultancy work done for Bosasa.”

Last weekend, Ramaphosa issued a correction to his parliamentary reply, claiming he learnt the money was made on behalf of Bosasa chief executive Gavin Watson into a trust account that was used to fund his election campaign.

Ramaphosa claimed he was unaware of the donation when he responded to Maimane’s question.

African Global Operations has since tried to distance itself from the donation, claiming it was a personal one from Watson.

Maimane, however, believes there is more to it.

“We can today confirm that Mr Jeffrey Afriat, a director at EFG ... served as one of three directors of Trillian Capital, a primary vehicle used by the Guptas to capture the state and loot billions of rands of public money.”

Maimane said Ramaphosa would now have little choice but to appoint a full-scale inquiry into the Bosasa scandal.

In response, EFG has said it was never privy to any of the information concerning the donors to Ramaphosa’s “CR17 campaign”.

EFG had to confirm that Afriat was a nonexecutive director at Trillian.

It said it had merely done its job to administer the trust account in question and Afriat had personally never been involved in any way in the matter.