\t\t \t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t \t\t <\/p>\n
Gaye Davis <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
JUDGE Willie Seriti, the chairman of the Arms Procurement Commission, has broken his silence on claims made in a resignation letter by one of its investigators, denying that it was operating under a secret agenda incompatible with its mandate to uncover the truth. <\/p>\n
Yesterday he accused Pretoria lawyer Norman Moabi of making \u201cfalse allegations to deliberately tarnish the image and credibility of the commission, probably because of a personal grudge he harbours against me based on reasons he has not disclosed\u201d. <\/p>\n
Moabi said he preferred not to comment until he had properly considered Judge Seriti\u2019s statement. <\/p>\n
Judge Seriti\u2019s response rejected the notion of a secret agenda and the manipulation of evidence and briefs \u2013 among the claims by Moabi which have put a question mark over the credibility of the commission, and Judge Seriti in particular. <\/p>\n
It was accompanied by a memorandum bearing the names of all 10 independent private legal practitioners \u2013 five of them senior counsel \u2013 who have accepted briefs to lead evidence. They had \u201cat no time\u2026 gained the impression that matters are being hidden from us\u201d and no areas were \u201coff-limits\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cNone of us have had any \u2018instructions\u2019 in any form,\u201d it states. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
They were all independent legal practitioners in private practice. <\/p>\n
In his statement, Judge Seriti said while he was primarily the target of Moabi\u2019s criticism \u201cthe whole commission is tarnished\u201d. <\/p>\n
Moabi claimed that in his \u201cperception\u201d, a hidden agenda was at play, based on the manipulation of information before the commission, including \u201cclandestine preparations\u201d of documents and briefs and \u201cunknown person(s)\u201d dictating what information should go into them, and the designation of witnesses to evidence leaders. <\/p>\n
He accused Judge Seriti of a \u201ctotal obsession with the control of the flow of information to and from the commission\u201d and also alleged nepotism. Judge Seriti did not respond to that allegation. He defended his control over information as consistent with the regulations governing the commission but said the mass of documents received were \u201caccessible to all the legal professional staff\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Judge Seriti said he did not recall making the comments quoted by Moabi as supporting evidence of a hidden agenda. These had contained an implied threat that witnesses once \u201cdealt with\u201d would no longer \u201cmake noises\u201d in the media and referred to submissions by arms deal inquiry campaigner Terry Crawford-Browne as being based on \u201chearsay\u201d. <\/p>\n
Minutes of a strategy meeting on November 6 referred to hearsay evidence, however. Crawford-Browne had \u201cinundated\u201d the commission with e-mails questioning how it was conducting its business and had also written articles in \u201csimilar vein\u201d, Judge Seriti said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI may have expressed the sentiment that he may stop the negative comments once he has given his evidence,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gaye Davis JUDGE Willie Seriti, the chairman of the Arms Procurement Commission, has broken his silence on claims made in a resignation letter by one of its investigators, denying that it was operating under a secret agenda incompatible with its mandate to uncover the truth. Yesterday he accused Pretoria lawyer Norman Moabi of making \u201cfalse […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-17518","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}