I was asked to pay Bobani’s legal fees, Le Roux claims
Port Elizabeth attorney David le Roux has revealed how he was allegedly asked to pay for UDM councillor Mongameli Bobani’s legal fees during his court battle with then city manager Lindiwe MsenganaNdlela.
In a statement detailing a web of corruption involving Nelson Mandela Bay’s bus system, Le Roux claimed to have had a meeting with Integrated Public Transport System head Mhleli Tshamase and finance official Nadia Gerwel at her office in July 2014.
At the meeting, Gerwel allegedly asked Le Roux to facilitate a payment from IPTS coffers to cover Bobani’s legal fees.
Le Roux’s statement, though unsigned, is almost identical to a signed response he made to the Legal Practice Council, which is investigating him for professional misconduct.
He first made the statement to investigators of the IPTS corruption more than two years ago, when trying to negotiate a deal which would have seen him escape prosecution.
However, he was turned down and his allegations form part of the Hawks investigation into how millions of rands from the project were looted.
In the statement, he wrote: “Gerwel informed me Bobani needed money for past and future legal costs in his battle with the then city manager.”
He was asked to create two invoices of R600,000 and R400,000.
“I was then requested to transfer the funds to Bobani,” he alleged.
Le Roux claimed Gerwel suggested he speak to Port Elizabeth businessman and ANC funder Fareed Fakir about it.
“After the meeting, I called Fakir and told him that I will not participate in this scheme and there is nothing to talk about. Fakir accepted this,” Le Roux wrote.
Attorney Danie Gouws, representing Bobani, Gerwel, Fakir and Tshamase, denied the meeting had ever taken place.
“Tshamase and Gerwel have denied having any meeting with Le Roux regarding the allegations in Le Roux’s statement,” he said.
“The allegations he made are false and should be treated as such.”
Gouws said Bobani, who is now mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay, had never requested the money and denied all the allegations in Le Roux’s statement.
“It is all false. Le Roux is lying,” he said.
Le Roux’s attorney, Lunen Meyer, declined to comment.
Gerwel faces dozens of charges including money laundering and fraud for allegedly looting IPTS funds, with her case to resume in September.
In 2013, Bobani went to court to challenge the qualifications of Msengana-Ndlela, who had taken a hard stance against corruption, questioning IPTS contracts such as the R174m Lumen Technologies contract, which never went to tender.
He was ordered by the court to pay R300,000 in legal costs.
This, as he had failed to convince the judge that MsenganaNdlela should be on special leave while her qualifications were being investigated.
Asked at the time how he would foot the large legal bill, Bobani told The Herald money was not a problem.
Ten months later he allegedly started to receive money from one of Fakir’s companies, Heerkos Projects, according to an affidavit by Hawks investigator Captain Henk Fourie.
Seven payments were allegedly made to Bobani from April 2014 to May 2015 – totalling R664,000.
Bobani is being investigated by the Hawks over the alleged payments, which are what prompted Hawks investigators to swoop on his office at the city hall in October.
In 2014, when The Herald exposed how a number of Fakir’s companies had benefited from IPTS tenders, Bobani said he believed the questions on payments to Fakir’s companies were an attack on blackowned companies.
Le Roux’s unsigned statement was written about two years ago, while his response to the Legal Practice Council emerged last week.
Both documents detail how Le Roux was part of the web that looted the IPTS scheme.