JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Tuesday 1.00pm.
THE signatures on three illegal promissory notes worth over R340-million have been conclusively proven to be those of Mpumalanga finance MEC Jacques Modipane.
Judge Willem Heath confirmed in a formal statement on Tuesday that two separate forensic handwriting tests by police specialists proved that Modipane signed the contentious documents in July 1998.
Modipane has consistently denied signing the promissory notes and instead accused two junior Mpumalanga Parks Board (MPB) officials of electronically forging his signature onto the certificates.
He publicly reiterated that he never signed the documents at the height of international outrage last month, when new Mpumalanga Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu said Modipane had admitted he lied but that this was an acceptable political technique. Modipane immediately refuted Mahlangu’s announcement and insisted he never signed the documents.
Heath said on Tuesday that Modipane and his legal team are no longer contesting the validity of the signatures.
“Modipane has now conceded that the signatures are his originals but is saying that he wasn’t properly briefed about the content or consequences of what he was signing,” said Heath.
“He claims that he was misled into signing the documents.”
Modipane also submitted a copy of a letter dated July 27 1998 in which he rejected a request from MPB chief executive Alan Gray for the issue of financial guarantees or promissory notes to raise funds.
The letter was issued two days before Modipane signed the promissory notes, which used 32 provincial game parks as collateral for offshore loans totalling R340-million.
The documents were issued without Reserve Bank, Treasury, ministerial or cabinet approval.
Heath confirmed that there was sufficient doubt about Modipane’s role in the deal to prevent any further action by the special investigative unit.
“We cannot prove for the purposes of our investigation that he agreed to the contents of the guarantees and cannot therefore hold him liable. We have, however, handed over all our evidence and files to the police and other special criminal investigators for possible fraud charges,” said Heath.
Police and the Investigative Directorate for Serious Economic Offences (IDSEO) are probing a series of more than five multi-million fraud charges at the MPB. –African Eye News Service