claims
Barry Streek
Former Minerals and Energy Minister Penuell Maduna this week admitted that he could not be “bothered” to retract his groundless accusation in Parliament in June 1997 that Auditor General Henri Kluever conspired in a cover-up of the theft of R170-million worth of oil.
Though he was aware within days that the claim was false, he said he could not be bothered to correct reports and impressions. He said the media interpreted things in many weird ways and “I could not be bothered about what the media said. They are so incorrigible.”
Maduna was testifying before Public Protector Selby Baqwa, his deputy Dr Tinus Schutte and Jacqui Record at public hearings in Cape Town.
Maduna maintained that his “only sin” in his bizarre conflict with Kluever was to ask some “very clumsy” questions of the auditor general in Parliament.
Maduna told Parliament in 1997: “As I have said, they will have to say exactly what happened to our money in the fiscus; they will have to account for that. As I have said, they still have to come up and say how, short of a big fire, they lost stock to the tune of R170-million.”
Maduna said his outburst had been triggered by the receipt of documents from an anonymous source and a conversation with then deputy minister in the deputy president’s office, Essop Pahad.
Eberhardt Bertelsman, representing Kluever and Price Waterhouse accountants, asked: “Did you not appreciate that a public statement there was no physical loss was appropriate?”
Maduna replied: “No I did not.”
He also said he could not respond to “every little thing in the newspapers”.
Some 50 files of documents have been submitted by lawyers representing the parties. This week 15 lawyers and officials were present while Maduna, now minister of justice, gave evidence. Three months have been set aside for the hearings.
What emerged this week is some of the facts that contributed to Maduna’s extraordinary response to a Democratic Party question in the National Assembly on June 17 1997.
His suspicions about South Africa’s oil purchasing bodies were fuelled by a number of documents anonymously dropped at his ministerial residence.
These included letters between the auditor general’s office and Price Waterhouse, had been appointed to conduct an audit of the Strategic Fuel Fund Association, the Central Energy Fund and the Equalisation Fund.
These documents demonstrated that there had been some “shoddy” auditing of these bodies, but their contents were not even raised with him when he met senior representatives of the auditor general’s staff. This increased his suspicions that something was “untoward”.
Without consulting the auditor general, he appointed a chartered accountant, Barend Petersen, to investigate the matter.
He was also alerted by Pahad to difficulties in the payments made to a company called Interstate and Fakhry Abdulnoor.
He was not able to quote Pahad verbally but the deputy minister asked him whether he knew anything about contracts relating to oil from Egypt. He did not know anything about the payments but his question conveyed the impression that “there was something irregular about those payments”.
By the time Petersen had completed his inquiry, both he and the minister were convinced the R170-million was missing.