The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) says it believes there is sufficient evidence for the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to investigate 13 people, including Deputy President David Mabuza, over an alleged R35-billion land restitution scam.
OUTA has referred a criminal complaint to the NPA, calling on the Investigating Directorate to probe charges of organised crime in Mpumalanga in 2002.
“They will now need to go and do the thorough investigations, subpoena the bank accounts, the minutes of meetings and so forth and we believe that there is sufficient evidence and criminal charges should flow against the Deputy President and 12 other people, some of whom were authorities within government at the time. There are farms in the area, private consortiums working with the authorities that goes and buys land and have those revalued at inflated prices and sells them back to government. In this case it was the Mpumalanga regional land claims commission and they would then have to buy that land and distribute it to the land claimants. What happened, though, was that there were no land claims and they proceeded and continued to do so,” OUTA’s CEO, Wayne Duvenage explains.
