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The DA is claiming that the Medupi and Kusile power stations were built to fund the ANC’s election campaign and wants the new national director of public prosecutions, Advocate Shamila Batohi, to investigate the governing party for racketeering.
The official opposition party made the call for Batohi to prioritise the investigation into the ANC during a press conference this morning, which was addressed by party leader Mmusi Maimane and MPs Glynnis Breytenbach and Natasha Mazzone.
Mazzone said that Eskom and state capture were used as a “conduit” by the ANC.
“You take an entity that has access to a lot of money such as Eskom and you start buying off members of that organisation who can then buy off pieces of that organisation and hand that money to politicians that will then use the money from the organisation. In other words it is your classic system of racketeering, and you saw it happen in Eskom through the use of coal. Coal became a conduit for state capture, and how the procurement of coal was conducted at Eskom.
“Then you saw an election coming along where the ANC faced a struggle with money and all of a sudden you had a requirement for two new power stations being built, which we now know were incorrectly designed and incorrectly put together,” Mazzone said.
Breytenbach said while she appreciated that Batohi has been inundated with numerous requests, that this one, made by the DA, should be “imperative.”
Breytenbach, who is a former prosecutor for the National Prosecuting Authority, said that the various commissions underway, the Nugent, the Zondo, the Mokgoro and the PIC commissions, had provided “copious” amounts of evidence which pointed to wrong doing. However, the public had been left in the dark as to what actions, if any, had been taken by law enforcement.
She said that the ANC is a legal entity which is run by the national executive committee whose members should all be held accountable for the various allegations of corruption and other illegal acts.
Maimane said that the ANC was a criminal syndicate which had been operating since 2001.
“A criminal syndicate is being conducted with the resources of the state and the overlapping of these issues cannot be mere coincidence. Indeed, none of this large-scale corruption on a national scale could have been contemplated and executed in isolation. It can only be the result of coordinated efforts on the part of the governing party to facilitate the corruption now being testified to in an array of fora,” he said.
“I have therefore approached Advocate Batohi, in writing, requesting that she proceeds with haste in charging the ANC – as a collective organisation –with the crimes of fraud, corruption, money laundering and racketeering as per the Prevention of Organised Crime Act 121 of 1998 (POCA). I have provided her with supporting documentation outlining the request.
“The provisions of POCA are clear: the ANC qualifies as an enterprise as per the act’s definition, and the evidence at hand and actions taken by the ANC, in our view, satisfies the requirements of racketeering and unlawful activity as defined in POCA. There exists a clear-cut criminal case for the ANC to answer to. The organisation must be fined heavily and individual members found guilty must be locked away behind bars.”
