When Phillip Dexter, South African Communist Party national treasurer, accepted a job as the CEO of the Mpumalanga Economic Empowerment Corporation (MEEC) in May last year, he had no idea what scale of corruption, political intrigue and fraud he would uncover.
Dexter, who is now the chairman of the Mpumalanga Economic Growth Agency (Mega, formerly the MEEC), is now squaring up to defend his name after noseweek investigative magazine accused him of being corrupt, of misappropriating funds, of spying on his staff, of being dishonest and of somehow being involved in the ”theft” of a car.
Three weeks ago a forensic audit report conducted by the Mega board audit committee cleared Dexter of every one of the 22 allegations noseweek made against him, and last week Dexter sued the magazine as well as the reporter who wrote the story, Mzilikazi wa Afrika. Dexter says he doesn’t want money, but demands an apology.
Dexter was brought into Mega in May last year after a series of fraud and corruption charges were made against Mega staff. ”Almost the whole management team was in on this corruption. There was a syndicate operating and I was brought in to clean up the mess. The most amazing things were happening and with government money!” said Dexter this week.
Although no one has yet been charged, the Scorpions are investigating the MEEC and Mega. Documents forming part of the Scorpions investigation indicate that Mega board members applied for loans from Mega, themselves or on behalf of companies, and then approved these loans while taking massive kickbacks.
”We’re talking big money. Shortly after starting my work there as CEO it became clear that about R140million was outstanding, with more than R40million outstanding on rent due on property owned by Mega,” said Dexter.
The same documents indicate that, since the early 1980s, R400million in MEEC and Mega funds has been lost, stolen or badly administrated.
Although nobody has been charged yet, the Scorpions are investigating Mega and its predecessor, the MEEC.
In its August issue noseweek implied that Dexter had been linked to the theft of Wa Afrika’s car from a shopping centre in Pretoria. The car boot reportedly contained files of confidential documents detailing Dexter’s alleged corrupt dealings at Mega. In his August editorial noseweek editor Martin Welz wrote: ”Within hours of the theft, Mega staff members somehow knew that the reporter’s car had been stolen. And two days later Dexter informed our reporter that he was aware that we had a ‘dossier’ of documents … relating to [Dexter’s] history at the MEEC. We had never shown him the file or referred to its existence in our interviews.”
Wa Afrika said the Audi had been lent to him while his car was being repaired. However, a manager at Audi in Menlyn, Pretoria, told the M&G this week that the car was not stolen but repossessed by Audi. ”Wa Afrika was driving one of our vehicles. He was supposed to return the car to us three weeks earlier. We phoned him and he just never returned any of our calls. We have satellite tracking on our vehicles and we know where our vehicles are at all times. We simply went and repossessed our car,” he said.
Approached for comment last week, Wa Afrika told the M&G: ”I’m a journalist and I don’t discuss my work with you.”
Dexter, meanwhile, says that he co-operated fully with noseweek: ”I spoke to Welz, told him that I have nothing to hide. I believe very firmly in the role of investigative journalism, but the noseweek article was not only bad journalism, it was also completely biased and one-sided and bears no resemblance to the truth.”
Welz said he did not want to comment on the merits of the case but that he was taking the matter seriously. ”The fact is that Dexter has the most expensive counsel in Cape Town and this could wipe us out. I don’t have a year and R1million to spend on a court case, so I am faced with apologising or retracting because that is the economically sensible thing to do.”