State won’t pay for Zuma’s legal challenge of corruption case
The presidency says it will only foot the bill for the legal costs of the actual trial once it gets under way.
ANC presidential candidate Cyril Ramaphosa sits beside the outgoing President Jacob Zuma at the ANC’s 54th National Elective Conference at Nasrec, Johannesburg, on 17 December 2017. The ANC gathers to elect new leadership, including a new party president for which Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma are the candidates. Picture: Yeshiel Panchia
The presidency will not foot former president Jacob Zuma’s legal bills incurred through his efforts to stop the fraud and corruption case brought against him by the national prosecuting authority (NPA), Business Day reports.
The former president is facing 16 charges of corruption, money laundering and racketeering in connection with the controversial multimillion-rand arms deal scandal in the late 1990s.
Zuma reportedly plans to challenge the legality of the case brought against him by the NPA, and the presidency has refused to cover costs related to these efforts – but will only cover the bill for the actual trial once it gets under way.
President Cyril Ramaphosa revealed in parliament earlier this year that the state had already spent R15.3 million on Zuma’s personal legal costs since 2006.
Ramaphosa said Zuma had requested that the state pay his legal expenses, a request which was approved by the presidency during former president Thabo Mbeki’s tenure based on advice from the state attorney’s office and the department of justice and constitutional development.
Zuma signed an undertaking to pay back the money if it was found that he had acted in his personal capacity and in his own interests when carrying out the offences he was charged with.
According to the Business Day, Zuma will have to persuade the state attorney that he qualifies for state funding for his court bid to halt the pending corruption trial.
Opposition parties the Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) have launched separate court bids to bring an end to the arrangement that the state continues covering Zuma’s legal fees.
The presidency said it would continue paying for Zuma’s legal fees until a point where the matter was concluded or a court decided otherwise.
The EFF wants the money that has been spent on the legal fees thus far to be recuperated from Zuma and his legal team, Business Day further reports.
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