MUNGO SOGGOT, Johannesburg | Thursday 4.50pm.
KOBUS van Zyl, the former general manager of the strategic fuel fund, says he will challenge in court the fund’s decision to fire him this week – 20 months after he was suspended.
Van Zyl was axed by an internal disciplinary panel on Monday after being found guilty on four of five charges, most of which related to the payment of a commission to an oil trader. The ministry of minerals and energy, which is in charge of the company, has adopted a circuitous strategy to oust van Zyl. Forensic accountants appointed by minister Penuell Maduna initially drew up a charge sheet with 180 entries, including many fraud allegations. The charges were then cut to 80, none of which were fraud.
The company started a disciplinary hearing with an external chairman in September this year, but then switched to an internal tribunal in which Van Zyl was denied legal representation.
Van Zyl said this week that at the start of his internal hearing he had informed the chairman, a state oil company director, that he believed the hearing was irregular. “Not surprisingly then I was found guilty on Monday, on four of the five charges, and summarily dismissed.
“I believe that no reasonable tribunal could have found me guilty on the evidence, but considering the bias against me, that had already been expressed in public by the board of directors of SFF I consider it futile to lodge an appeal against the verdict,” he said. Van Zyl said his lawyers would apply to the High Court to review his dismissal shortly, but declined to comment on the substance of the tribunal’s findings.