Durban - Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan is considering how to handle the thorny question of Sars’ “rogue” intelligence unit allegations, after a call from the lawyer for two ex-officials at the centre of the furore for a judicial commission of inquiry to establish the truth.
It is a delicate issue for Gordhan because it was reported in the Sunday Times that a KPMG “report” had recommended he be investigated as to whether he knew about the unit’s allegedly unlawful operations.
As the Sars commissioner in charge when the unit was set up, Gordhan insisted its work was above board and questioned the veracity of KPMG’s findings.
It emerged in a ruling by a press ombud Johan Retief in December in response to a complaint from Gordhan that the KPMG report relied on for the Sunday Times front-page story of October 4, headlined “Call to probe Pravin Gordhan over Sars spy saga”, was an early draft and not the final report as claimed.
Retief wrote in his ruling that the newspaper had not been justified to present what it called “findings” as the final version of KPMG’s report. The story had been “inaccurate, misleading and unfair”.
The Sunday Times has appealed against the ruling, which instructed it to publish an apology.
Speaking to Independent Newspapers on Friday, Mohamed Husain, the lawyer for former Sars deputy commissioner Ivan Pillay, and former head of the unit known as the national research group, Johan van Loggerenberg, who have resigned, said they wanted a judicial commission of inquiry so they could get an opportunity to clear their names.
Pillay laid a separate complaint with the press ombud which was also partly upheld.
Pillay, Van Loggerenberg and Gordhan said they had not been given an opportunity to respond to the allegations in the course of various official investigations.
Husain said the Sikhakhane report, the Frank Kroon advisory panel and the KPMG report, “in such form as it is”, needed to be clarified by a judicial inquiry. While he had not yet approached Gordhan, he said: “We’re considering all our options, and that is one of them.”
Gordhan’s spokeswoman Phumza Macanda, said the minister had to be properly briefed. However, Gordhan made it clear that re-establishing the integrity of the service in the public mind was a priority. At a press briefing in Pretoria this week, he said he wanted “a publicly credible customs and tax administration that was run on a professional, independent and acceptably fair basis”.
He has frozen a restructuring process initiated by commissioner Tom Moyane, who dissolved the service’s executive after his appointment in September 2014 and suspended senior officials including Pillay who had served under Gordhan.
The minister said the public credibility of the service was paramount: “We’ve done that well in the 2000s to establish that and we should not lose it. Particularly in the current environment, throughout the world, there’s scepticism in the minds of the public about public finances, and we need to reassure the South African public that public finances are in good hands.”
- Sunday Tribune