The Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) confirmed on Wednesday it has requested the New National Party hold in trust a R300 000 donation linked to the controversial Roodefontein golf estate development.
The NNP was to have returned the money to Italian billionaire Count Ricardo Agusta.
AFU head Willie Hofmeyr said his unit was exploring whether it was possible to seize the money in terms of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act.
”… on the basis that the money may have been the proceeds of crime or an instrument of crime, in the sense that it was a bribe.”
The law allowed the unit to seize the funds even if there was no criminal conviction.
”So, we are looking at this matter urgently and if it is possible to take action we will be doing so in the next few days,” he said.
NNP legal services director Dirk Bakker said the AFU and the Scorpions had requested the party to keep the money with its lawyers.
”I have given the undertaking that the amount will be held back,” he said, adding that the party would be discussing the matter with the AFU ”in due course”.
Earlier in the day, Bakker said the party had deposited the donation with ”well-known Cape Town lawyers” with the instruction that it be returned to Agusta, once his account details were known.
Agusta is apparently out of the country.
NNP leader, and Western Cape premier, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, vowed on January 21 that the donation, allegedly given to the party as a kick-back for approval of the development, would be returned within 10 days.
David Malatsi — who resigned as deputy social development minister last week for his role in the scandal — allegedly pushed through approval for the development while he was the Western Cape’s environment MEC.
This was after Malatsi and former Western Cape premier Peter Marais met the developers and after receipt of the donation. The two senior NNP politicians have been suspended by the party. Democratic Alliance provincial environment representative Robin Carlisle said in a statement on Tuesday that until Van Schalkwyk followed through on his undertaking to return the funds, it was merely a ”PR exercise”.
The NNP should also reveal what it had done with a R100 000 donation allegedly deposited by Agusta into Malatsi’s Khayelitsha constituency account.
Bakker said that donation was part of an investigation by the national Directorate of Public Prosecutions and would be dealt with once the probe was complete. – Sapa