Deputy President Jacob Zuma has strongly hinted he may miss the Thursday deadline to answer a list of questions the Scorpions put to him earlier this month regarding the multi-billion rand arms deal.
In a statement on Wednesday evening he said that as far as he was concerned there was no set deadline.
“I shall respond at my earliest convenience,” he said.
The Scorpions have given the deputy president until Thursday to provide them with answers to the questions, which were sent to his lawyers in Durban on July 9. Zuma said his legal team was busy drafting a response to the questions.
Zuma said he considered many of the questions invasive of his privacy and unrelated to any “conceivable contravention of the law arising from the Arms Procurement Process”.
Zuma again strongly dismissed the arms deal allegations levelled against him as “utterly baseless”, rejecting “with contempt” suggestions he solicited or even discussed accepting a bribe.
“I have said before for the record, and repeat, that I have nothing to hide and reject with contempt any suggestion that I solicited or in any way agreed to accept or even discussed accepting a bribe,” said Zuma.
The main allegation against Zuma is that he attempted to solicit R500 000 from a company that benefited from the arms deal. In return, he allegedly offered to protect the firm during subsequent investigations.
Zuma expressed outrage at the list of 35 questions which was leaked to a Sunday newspaper.
Scorpions’ spokesperson Sipho Ngwema said earlier that most of the questions related to Zuma’s relationship with his financial adviser Schabir Shaik — himself under investigation regarding the arms deal — and Shaik’s company Nkobi Holdings.
Said Zuma: “I had already begun working on a draft response prepared by
my counsel when, as I have said before, to my amazement and outrage, I found that the Sunday press of 27 July carried front page stories with graphic detail of all the questions.”
Zuma said that it was “not the first time” that there had been leaks to the media of information gathered by the Scorpions for the arms deal investigation and that there had been a “consistent pattern of such leaks”.
“Given the history of the matter and the serious nature of the leaks, I would have expected that the NPA (National Prosecuting Authority) and the Ministry of Justice … would have refrained from attributing blame for the leaks on the strength of a hasty, cursory investigation,” he said.
“I wish to express my unqualified support for the principle that every accused person is entitled to a fair investigation, uncontaminated by ulterior motives on the part of the investigating authorities, a speedy conclusion of the investigation and a fair trial in open court and ensuring that justice prevails,” he said.
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