By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The South Africa Reserve Bank (SARB) has granted President Cyril Ramaphosa another extension as it probes the theft of an unspecified foreign currency from a game farm he owns.
The Financial Surveillance Department is investigating whether exchange control regulations were flouted during the alleged sale of game at his farm.
In a letter to Parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance last month, SA Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago said its financial surveillance department had written to Ramaphosa’s legal team on 20 June to request “information and details regarding the origin of the foreign currency and any underlying transaction that may pertain to it”.
The bank had initially given Ramaphosa 21 business days to respond to the letter but later gave him an extension of 15 working days.
Kganyago’s letter to the committee follows letters written to it by two of the committee members – EFF deputy leader Floyd Shivambu and DA MP Dion George.
The theft first came to light in June when former spy boss Arthur Fraser declared in an affidavit lodged with the police that at least $4 million, which had been concealed in furniture, was stolen from the farm.
Ramaphosa has said the amount was nowhere near as large but has not provided any information on the sum.
The EFF has condemned, what it terms, a patently corrupt decision by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) to grant yet another extension for Ramaphosa to respond to the questions posed to him regarding Phala Phala farm robbery.
According to the EFF, the SARB has “now confirmed” that it is complicit in the cover-up of Phala Phala Farm, by granting an unjustifiable extension to an individual who is determined to avoid accountability.
“It is absolutely ridiculous that Ramaphosa has not accounted for the origins and underlying transactions of the millions of US dollars at Phala Phala farm to the Reserve Bank, after being afforded 79-days to do so. Ramaphosa has now been granted two extensions, after failing to respond within the initial 21-days he was granted from 20 June 2022,” the red berets said in a statement.
The have been reports that mysterious Sudanese businessman handed $580 000 (about R8 million) in cash to an employee at Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala farm 45 days before the same money was stolen.
Ramaphosa’s responses to the Public Protector reveal the president knew about the $580 000 in cash for more than a month before it was stolen.