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Cape Town - Anti-corruption advocacy group the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse has called on Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane to step down, saying she is biased and has acted outside her mandate.
On Friday the North Gauteng High Court set aside Mkhwebane's Bankorp-CIEX report, in which she had ordered ABSA to pay R1.125bn.
On Saturday, a spokesperson for Mkhwebane said the Public Protector had “noted with shock the judgment” and was studying it to decide on appropriate action.
In a statement on Tuesday, OUTA said it appeared that Mkhwebane had been biased in her findings in the Bankorp matter.
“We have not been impressed by the Public Protector’s conduct since her early days and this particular judgment sends a clear message that advocate Mkhwebane acted outside of her powers and was biased in her findings,” argued advocate Stefanie Fick, the organisation’s head of legal affairs.
“We are concerned at her one-sided reporting and it is extremely worrying when the Public Protector does not apply the basic principles that require her to conduct an in-depth interview with the accused before making her findings.”
OUTA noted that Mkhwebane had been ordered to personally pay 15% of the the SA Reserve Bank’s costs, which was also a party to the court action.
“We will be approaching Parliament requesting them to review her actions and call her to account,” said OUTA chief operating officer Ben Theron, without specifying how and when this would be done.
The advocacy group is not the first to call for the Public Protector to step down in the wake of the judgment.
As City Press reported over the weekend, the DA has also called on her to vacate her post. Its chief whip John Steenhuisen has written to Speaker Baleka Mbete requesting that the National Assembly expedite procedures to remove Mkhwebane from office on the basis of the court ruling.
The Bankorp-CIEX matter was heard at the North Gauteng High Court in December over three days before a full bench of judges including Justice Cynthia Pretorius, Judge Nomonde Mngqibisa-Thusi and Judge Dawie Fourie.
Judgement was reserved at the time, and delivered on Friday.
The court case related to the report Mkhwebane released in June 2017, where she called for ABSA to repay R1.125bn for a lifeboat provided to Bankorp by the Reserve Bank during the apartheid era. Both the SARB and ABSA had filed court applications to have the court review the report and set it aside.
In the judgment the remedial action that ABSA had to pay back the money was set aside.
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