Nearly two years after EFF MP Nazier Paulsen resigned from the Western Cape Legislature, he finally handed over a laptop after he was accused of stealing it.
Paulsen returned the electronic device, which he had received as a perk while serving as MPL.
He said he deleted all the data on the laptop and had loaded a new operating system.
“I made the username Day Zero, the password is Stinky and the password hint is Chief Whip. We don’t fear anything.
“I made numerous attempts to get this sorted out by offering to buy it from the legislature, but they refused on a number of occasions,” he said.
Paulsen was elected to the provincial legislature in May 2014 as the sole EFF MPL. He resigned a year later, opting to swop with the party’s Western Cape leader Bernard Joseph, who took his seat when Paulsen moved to the National Assembly.
The DA-led legislature opened a theft case against Paulsen at Cape Town Central police station and requested the police to investigate Paulsen’s “refusal or failure to return the property”.
Paulsen said all he wanted was the laptop that contained sensitive information of the work he did while he served as an MPL.
“I never stole the laptop. I wanted to buy it because there is valuable information on it and the laptop has reached the end of its lifespan. I called various people to try to make arrangements (to buy it).
“But I was then informed that it had been decided to approach the police,” he said.
During a parliamentary question in 2016, the DA’s chief whip in the legislature, Mark Wiley, asked Community Safety MEC Dan Plato about the status of a police probe into the theft of a laptop from the legislature by a former MPL.
Plato informed the House that the case had been withdrawn.
But Paulsen said the National Prosecuting Authority had decided to proceed with the theft case against him.