NPA says Gordhan not facing arrest

23 May 2016 - 12:33 By REUTERS
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Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan is not being investigated for espionage for his part in establishing a surveillance unit in the revenue service during his time in charge, the state prosecutor said on Monday.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan addresses the eThekwini Ward 65 Branch fund raising dinner at the Savera Hotal in Durban on Saturday night.Gordhan said," There are good people being persecuted and thats wrong.Its wrong.It's wrong for persons like Ivan Pillay, Robert McBride and many others to be persecuted in the way they are being persecuted after giving offering their lives for the movement."
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan addresses the eThekwini Ward 65 Branch fund raising dinner at the Savera Hotal in Durban on Saturday night.Gordhan said," There are good people being persecuted and thats wrong.Its wrong.It's wrong for persons like Ivan Pillay, Robert McBride and many others to be persecuted in the way they are being persecuted after giving offering their lives for the movement."
Image: RAJESH JANTILAL

The National Prosecuting Authority head Shaun Abrahams asked South Africans to "stop deriving political mileage of this matter," following media reports last week that the minister's arrest was imminent.

Earlier the Hawks police unit said it has no plans to arrest Gordhan.

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Gordhan, who was reinstated as finance minister in December, had said last week that a newspaper report of his imminent arrest was an attack on the Treasury.

"He is not a suspect," Hawks spokesman Hangwani Mulaudzi told Reuters, adding that the unit was not singling out Gordhan in its investigation of the surveillance unit.

The Hawks is investigating a surveillance unit within the South African Revenue Service (SARS), Mulaudzi said. Gordhan headed the SARS between 1999 to 2009.

The Sunday Independent reported at the weekend that Hawks chief Berning Ntlemeza had sent Gordhan's lawyers a letter to reassure him he would not be arrested.

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