Former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor has raised concerns about her cellphone records being accessed by the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.
Mentor is back on the witness stand at the commission underway in Parktown in Johannesburg.
She is expected to conclude her testimony, then she will be cross-examined by legal representatives of some people she has implicated in her evidence.
Mentor has suggested to the commission that the legal team has been more concerned on protecting the confidentiality of Atul Gupta’s travel records than other people’s confidential information.
She has stressed that her cellphone records are private and have nothing to do with the work of the commission.
“Yesterday I raised the issue with Ms Sello about my telephone records. On Friday we were handed a record of my telephone conversations pertaining to all my Vodacom numbers. The telephone records go up to phone calls I made 10 days ago. I don’t know why the commission would seek telephonic conversations, my telephone records that are up to as recent as 10 days ago.”
Earlier she has once again insisted to the commission that she flew to Johannesburg from Cape Town using South African Airways (SAA), despite records not showing so.
Mentor has claimed in her testimony that she boarded an SAA plane from Cape Town to Johannesburg, during the said period and met with former President Jacob Zuma and the Gupta brothers.
She has also testified that this was where she was offered a Ministerial post by one of the Gupta brothers.
Mentor says despite SAA records showing that she didn’t board the plane, she used the services of SAA on the day.
Evidence leader Advocate Mahlape Sello told Mentor that she also doesn’t appear on other airlines which were investigated.
“I would like also to highlight the last paragraph of this letter which reads as this “in the circumstances we think it highly likely that if Ms mentor was a serving parliamentarian or government official during 2010 her flight booking would have been made on the services of SAA and not on COMAIR” I bring that to the chairs attention because it was not a prohibition that you may fly another airline and often when you have missed a SAA you would be placed on any other airline that is available.”
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