Cape Town - Western Cape Premier Helen Zille has slammed reports linking her to suspended crime intelligence police officer Paul Scheepers, saying they are part of a “desperate attempt to manufacture a scandal”.
Scheepers, currently facing charges of fraud, perjury and contravening the Electronic Communications Act in the Bellville Regional Court, is out on bail of R2 000 after his arrest in May.
The police’s Hawks unit are also investigating how he came into possession of a “grabber”, used to intercept mobile communications.
Scheepers is also fighting in the Western Cape High Court for the return of equipment seized from him in May, saying the search warrant authorising the raid was invalid.
In her newsletter, Zille denied that Scheepers had been hired to spy on the ANC opposition.
She insisted that Scheepers’s company, Eagle Eye Solutions Technology, was only used in 2010 by the provincial government to “debug cellphones” by installing software to prevent them from being bugged.
“I saw Scheepers once, briefly, when I handed him my cellphone and he handed it back to my secretary afterwards. I never once discussed spying or surveillance with him, and that was never his brief,” said Zille.
A police source has claimed that Scheepers had worked for several DA politicians, and had done more than just debugging as claimed by Zille, but had actively worked to spy on those in her party who she had deemed a threat.
ANC Western Cape leader Marius Fransman said Zille had to explain why she had pre-empted Scheepers’s high court application by mentioning the case in her weekly newsletter.
“She started referring to politicians and discredited SAPS and the ANC. It is Zille who is fixated on spying on people,” said Fransman.
Cape Times
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