Members of the standing committee on finance want the central bank to give it an update on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s farmgate scandal.
POLITICAL parties have accused the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) of protecting president Cyril Ramaphosa over the Phala Phala “farmgate” scandal.
This comes as members of the standing committee on finance want the central bank to give it an update on whether any exchange control measures were violated by Ramaphosa.
This was in relation to an unreported robbery that took place at Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala farm that made headlines earlier this year.
Ramaphosa’s cash transaction involving $4 million was hidden in furniture with the theft investigated off the record and allegedly covered up.
Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago and the Prudential Authority briefed the committee on their annual reports on Wednesday.
EFF MP Floyd Shivambu accused the SARB of trying to protect Ramaphosa, demanding that it respond to its questions at Wednesday’s meeting.
“Did you do anything about a prima facie violation of foreign currency regulations. That is what you must be responding to. We are not asking for a comment from you. We are asking for accountability. You’ve got an obligation. It doesn’t matter how you feel personally, whether you want to protect the sitting president or not,” he said.
Kganyago told MPs that the letters had been responded to and said that commenting on the matter could undermine the investigation.
“We co-operate, we are working with law enforcement agencies on this and I don’t think that it would serve us any good trying to get into the details of what is going on. It will undermine the investigations we are doing,” the governor said.
Earlier this year in June, DA leader John Steenhuisen and the leader of ActionSA, Herman Mashaba, called on Ramaphosa to explain himself to the nation on the circumstances surrounding the robbery at his Phala Phala farm in Limpopo, as called upon by the Constitution.
Coined ‘DollarGate’ by the DA, the scandal includes allegations of bribery and kidnapping. The president allegedly had kept some $4 million at the farm which was stolen by Ramaphosa’s domestic worker in collaboration with a group of Namibian nationals who broke into Ramaphosa’s farm in February 2020.
Ramaphosa then decided to keep this incident under wraps to avoid public scrutiny and in his words “avoid a crisis”.
Steenhuisen says the president is facing a crisis of credibility with a cloud over his head following these revelations and that the country can ill-afford for the president to remain mum over the allegations of money laundering , kidnapping and bribery that have since been levelled against him.
– BUSINESS REPORT
