Johannesburg - Former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor has threatened to take the Hawks to court if they continue delaying state capture investigations.
Earlier this year, she submitted an affidavit to the elite crime fighters, detailing allegations of a corrupt relationship between President Jacob Zuma and the Gupta family.
Mentor wrote that she was offered the position of public enterprises minister by one of the Guptas at their Johannesburg home in 2010 but she declined.
Last week, she lodged a complaint against the Hawks with the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) because she believed they were taking far too long to finalise the investigations.
In her affidavit, Mentor said Zuma was in another room when the Guptas made the offer, which was in exchange for influencing SAA to dropping its routes to India.
Mentor wrote the first affidavit in May.
She said that in June, the Hawks sent an officer to her Cape Town home to take down another statement – one that would be acceptable in court.
Mentor said the man, who introduced himself only as Mtolo, asked her to remove the information implicating Zuma because the National Prosecuting Authority would refuse to prosecute.
He asked her not to mention the names of the ministers and said she should instead should use the names of the accounting officers, such as directors-general and board members.
She said she never heard from the Hawks again.
Mentor said she believed some of the details from her first affidavit had been altered and that was the reason the Hawks had been ignoring her.
She said she had been pleading with them to return her affidavit but they had been scared to do so because certain facts in the affidavit she made at the police station had been removed.
“He scratched out certain things that were in my first affidavit,” she said.
On Sunday, Hawks spokesperson Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi said they had been trying to get further details from Mentor in order to finalise their investigations for several months.
He said he had personally phoned her after they couldn’t find her. She said she had been in hospital.
Mulaudzi denied that they had asked Mentor to remove information implicating Zuma and certain ministers.
He said there was no basis for Mentor to report the Hawks to Ipid because she did not avail herself for the investigators to get further details for them to be able to finalise the investigations.
But Mentor accused the Hawks of lying, saying they were contacting her only now because she has lodged a complaint with Ipid.
She confirmed that the Hawks had contacted her over the weekend.
She vowed to sue Ipid if she didn’t get any joy.
“It’s a blue lie. The affidavit has all my details, including my email address. They are up to sh*t. They are trying to cover up. They must know that I have never lost any battle, no matter how big the monster is,” she retorted.
She accused the Hawks of illegally bugging her phone.
“They have the propensity to listen to people without getting a judge’s order. I know when a cellphone is being listened to,” she said.
Mulaudzi said Mentor was welcome to approach acting national police commissioner Khomotso Phahlane to investigate the allegations.