He wants the high court to rule that the “public protector’s subpoena powers do not extend to taxpayer information”, and he wants Mkhwebane to pay 15% of the legal costs, which would result from her choosing to oppose the interdict.
Former president Jacob Zuma. Picture Neil McCartney
Former president Jacob Zuma took to Twitter on Tuesday to state that if Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane wants to obtain his South African Revenue Service (Sars) records “she must have them”.
Mkhwebane recently issued a subpoena in an attempt to obtain Zuma’s tax information as part of an investigation into a complaint laid by former DA leader Mmusi Maimane – which resulted from claims made in investigative journalist Jacques Pauw’s bestseller The President’s Keepers – into payments the former president is accused of receiving from a security company.
Sars commissioner Edward Kieswetter subsequently launched an urgent interdict that, if successful, would limit the public protector’s powers.
Kieswetter is attempting to get the High Court in Pretoria to halt the implementation of the subpoena, and to order that Sars officials should be allowed to withhold tax information from the office of the public protector.
On Tuesday, Kieswetter reportedly told the media that Sars cannot be compelled to give taxpayers’ information to the public protector.
The SABC reported that Kieswetter said in adherence to South African laws, the confidentiality between Sars and taxpayers should be protected.
However, the former president said on Twitter that if Mkhwebane wants to see his Sars records “she is free to do so” because he has “nothing to hide”.
“We should not make the job of the [public protector] difficult. If she wants my records, she must have them,” Zuma tweeted.
In previous tweets, the former president said he had not been “consulted” on Kieswetter and Mkhwebane having butted heads over his Sars records.
The former president tweeted that he has never refused the office of the public protector access to investigate his affairs and that it is public knowledge that Mkhwebane’s predecessor, Thuli Madonsela, had investigated him on a number of occassions and had made findings against him.
“I never refused nor hid anything she wanted to investigate. Even where I personally thought she was going beyond her mandate and powers, I still obliged because I respect the office of the public protector and therefore I am not part of the contestation of my tax records,” Zuma tweeted.
(Compiled by Makhosandile Zulu)
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