Spy blames shelving of Absa report on Mandela

Former British spy Michael Oatley says Nelson Mandela scuppered his investigation into apartheid looting because he feared it would alienate Afrikaners who had cut secret deals with the ANC.

This is claimed in letters Oatley wrote this week to public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane and her predecessor Thuli Madonsela. The letters, seen by the Sunday Times, were sent after the public protector's draft report of a suspect bailout by the Reserve Bank of Absa's predecessor Bankorp was leaked.

The State Security Agency hired Oatley's company CIEX in 1997 to investigate the bailout.

In the letters, Oatley slams Mkhwebane for "mangling" Madonsela's report. He says it was Mandela, not Mbeki as Mkhwebane's report states, who halted his investigation.

Mbeki "sat up late going over my reports and discussing them with me, encouraging me", he says.

"He particularly liked my suggestion that we would provide revelations about systemic Afrikaner white corruption to balance the much lesser (then) instances of black official corruption which were being hyped by an unfriendly media."

Oatley believes Mandela was briefed only after two ministerial meetings where his recommendations were endorsed.

"After that it all came unstuck. When he learned of it, President Mandela ruled that moving against Absa, and effectively the Afrikaner financial nexus, was inconsistent with his policy of reconciliation (and with) secret pre-change agreements," he says. "By then, of course, Absa had made itself the ANC's best friend."

In his letter to Mkhwebane, Oatley says important papers he supplied to Madonsela are missing from the list of documents she said she relied on to produce her report.

This resulted in "fundamental errors and distortions", he says.

The documents that Oatley says are missing include:

• Three reports compiled by CIEX about the Absa lifeboat, with detailed recommendations on how the money could be recovered;

• Specimen criminal charges to be brought against former Reserve Bank governor Chris Stals;

• Oatley's correspondence with Mbeki and former State Security Agency boss Billy Masetlha and;

• Notes of meetings with cabinet ministers.

He says the documents would contradict the claim by Mbeki that the government terminated his company's services because of a "failure to deliver".

The public protector investigation began in 2011 when advocate Paul Hoffman accused the government of wasting millions hiring CIEX to investigate the Absa lifeboat, then failing to pursue the case.

The leaked report recommends that the Reserve Bank should start legal action against Absa to recover R2.25-billion for an apartheid-era bailout of Bankorp in 1985.

Absa said it would make further submissions in response to the report to correct "several factual and legal inaccuracies" without specifying these.

Mkhwebane said through her spokesman Oupa Segalwe that she would not comment "because we do not engage publicly on the content of leaked documents".

Madonsela has denied claims that she prioritised her state capture investigation over the Absa lifeboat case.

"I bent over backwards to accept and conduct the CIEX investigation, though my team as a whole rejected it," she said.

She said the final draft of the provisional report landed on her desk two days before her last day in office. She sent it back for "fine tuning" and had not received the amended version before she left.

"If I did not want to conduct this investigation, I had more than enough reasons and opportunities to close it.

"The report had limited resources: me and an intern and later a trainee promoted to investigator.

"This was because I took it against my team's conclusions and even on review."

Madonsela said she had been unable to brief Mkhwebane on the Absa report.

"I only left an administrative report on the state of the investigation and others.

"A request for a briefing meeting has not yet been honoured.

"A scheduled meeting for 17 October was cancelled by her with the understanding it would be rescheduled, but attempts by me to reschedule have not been successful as my colleague claimed she was busy."