Busi to face CIEX report review in December

On Friday, Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane abandoned her application for extra time to reply to Absa, the SA Revenue Service (Sars) and National Treasury regarding their attack on her Bankorp bailout report, which formed part of the so-called CIEX report.

Absa had accused Mkhwebane of buying time with frivolous objections and avoiding hard questions about why and how her legal team abandoned her halfway through the pending review application.

On Friday, the bank’s spokesperson, Phumza Macanda, said they were pleased the review could now be heard, as planned, on December 5.

Last week, Mkhwebane applied for permission to submit her court papers at the end of January. This would have pushed the hearing out to the middle of 2018.

The main reason given was that her legal team withdrew at the end of September and her new lawyers would be unable to get a grip on the case by the prescribed deadline.

In an affidavit this week, Absa’s head of litigation, Steven Palmer, speculated that Mkhwebane’s legal team had realised the case could not be won and that Mkhwebane would not follow their advice.

“The Public Protector refuses even to set out whether she terminated the mandates of her prior legal team or whether they withdrew, or the reason for such withdrawal or what the basis for the withdrawal was – for instance, whether they had provided advice to the Public Protector concerning her continued opposition to this application which she declined to follow,” he said in his affidavit.

Absa had previously, in legal correspondence, asked that Mkhwebane reveal more details about her lawyers jumping ship.

Withdrawal 

Mkhwebane’s spokesperson, Cleopatra Mosana, told City Press that “as a matter of fact, they (the lawyers) were not fired, but they withdrew themselves.

"You may contact them to provide the reasons for withdrawal.”

Even if there was nothing untoward about the change in legal teams, both Absa and the Reserve Bank this week accused Mkhwebane of “grossly exaggerating” the difficulty of answering the damning review cases against her Bankorp report.

Mkhwebane’s original attorneys, Sefanyetso Attorneys, filed their notice of withdrawal on September 28.

A few days later, on October 2, her new attorneys, Motsoeneng Bill Attorneys, filed their notice of appointment.

Motsoeneng Bill would also not accept the work on short notice without having been briefed about it already, Palmer claimed.