Bantu Holomisa. Picture - Citizen stock
Harith General Partners, which has just been cleared of wrongdoing following a joint probe by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) and the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), is preparing to claim millions of rands in a defamation suit against United Democratic Movement (UDM) leader Bantu Holomisa.
Holomisa accused the company five years ago of fleecing the PIC.
In the latest (fifth) investigation – commissioned by the PIC into the conduct of Harith and its directors Tshepo Mahloele and Jabu Moleketi – no evidence of wrongdoing or impropriety was found, bringing an end to the five-year-long battle.
In 2018 the group obtained an interdict against Holomisa in the Pretoria High Court to stop him from making defamatory remarks about the business. Holomisa lost his appeal against the ruling in the Supreme Court of Appeal – and again at the Constitutional Court, which upheld the ruling of the high court, apart from one technical point.
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Holomisa made the accusations in 2019, in an open letter to the presidency, where he claimed Harith was in cahoots with then PIC CEO Dan Matjila, alleging that the CEO would direct funding deals to the infrastructure development investment firm.
Since then, Harith has undergone various investigations, including by the Mpati Commission of Inquiry into allegations of impropriety regarding the PIC and a probe by the Southern African Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (Savca).
The latest investigation was commissioned by the PIC and the GEPF at the behest of the Mpati Commission. It found there was no evidence to support the allegations made against Harith and its fund manager unit.
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Harith CEO Sipho Makhubela tells Moneyweb the company is in the process of reconciling the damages it has allegedly suffered over the past five years. He claims the financial impact has cost the business hundreds of millions of rands.
“On [legal] cost alone, we spent no less than R10 million – you’re not beginning to talk about damages to us, the damage is in the hundreds of millions of rand,” says Makhubela.
“From day one, we did say he’s defaming us.”
When the accusations were first made, the company had to surrender some of its shareholdings, with other potential investors walking away from deals as a result, he adds.
“We’ve lost business opportunities – those are damages that we can quantify. We had investors, we were in advanced talks … We had businesses that we were owners of. We could not meet the ambitions of those businesses, so we had to suspend our shareholding and give them up.”
Makhubela says the company isn’t just seeking redress for the amounts it has spent on legal processes, but for the full extent it has suffered – including costs associated with rehabilitating its brand.
“It’s incalculable … Now he [Holomisa] must go defend defamation, and now that we have this outcome that says there’s nothing, we clearly are defamed.
“We are awaiting a trial date. We do know the wheels of justice grind slowly, but we will see it through.”
Holomisa says Harith is celebrating prematurely and that the forensic report from the joint investigation is not a court decision.
He says Harith should be applying for a judiciary review if it is “aggrieved” by the findings of the Mpati Commission.
“[The latest report] will have to be subjected to scrutiny [by] us if they threaten to go to court.
“We would want to see the report in full and [as] part of that, we would want to know whether those who were conducting the forensic [investigation] did go to the countries in Africa where the millions are said to have been invested,” says Holomisa.
“It cannot be just a full forensic report of just looking at the financial reports, annual reports of Harith.”
On Harith’s intentions to claim millions in damages, Holomisa says the company will have to justify the financial losses in court, adding that he stands ready for the process.
“That is not going to be used as a scarecrow tactic,” he says.
This article originally appeared on Moneyweb and was republished with permission.
Read the original article here.
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