PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa has told Parliament that he has no control to unseal confidential Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) documents containing a list of donors who contributed to the CR17 campaign.
Ramaphosa was responding to a question from the EFF leader Julius Malema and other MPs in the National Assembly on Thursday afternoon.
The FIC is opposing an application by the EFF to unseal the court record in last year’s Pretoria High Court battle between the president and the Public Protector.
“The bank statements in question are from accounts over which I do not have any form of control. They belong to entities and private companies which I do not control and whose internal financial affairs are protected by the country’s privacy laws,” said Ramaphosa.
“It is therefore not within my power to make any of them public.”
The court is still to decide whether EFF should be allowed to access the banking records of the CR17 campaign.
The campaign saw Ramaphosa elected ANC president at the ANC’s 2017 Nasrec elective congress.
Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane obtained bank statements for the campaign from the Financial Intelligence Centre and in her report revealed that millions of rands were received in donations.
She once noted that there was a “risk of some sort of state capture by those donating these monies to the campaign.”
Ramaphosa told the MPSs: “As the Honourable Malema should know, it is the EFF – not the Public Protector as he suggests in his question – that has brought the application to unseal documents related to the Public Protector’s report of July 2019.”
“The body from whom the Public Protector obtained the bank statements in question, the Financial Intelligence Centre, has consistently opposed the publication of these documents,” said Ramaphosa.
“The FIC has confirmed in its affidavits before court that the information it shared with the Public Protector could only be made public with their express permission, which was not sought by the Public Protector. Only the FIC can ‘allow’ these documents to be made public.”
He said there was absolutely no evidence of corruption or any other form of improper conduct exists in relation to these documents or to CR17 campaign.
“To repeat what I said on this matter in this House on 22 August 2019, there are no rules or regulations in place for the disclosure of donations for internal party leadership contests,” he said.
Ramaphosa added: “I am sure that the Honourable Malema would agree that it would be unreasonable to expect the disclosure of such information until such time that all candidates and all parties are held to the same requirements of disclosure and transparency.”
“The Political Party Funding Act – which I signed into law last year and which the EFF has consistently opposed – does regulate public and private funding of political parties and requires the disclosure of donations that are accepted.”
(SOURCE: INSIDE POLITICS)
