She had testified about traveling with Ajay Gupta in the same plane from Cape Town to Johannesburg and said in the trip the Gupta brother told her he would speak to then President Jacob Zuma for her to become public enterprise minister.
Chief justice Raymond Zondo has found that former Parliamentarian Vytjie Mentor lied when claiming that the Guptas offered her a ministerial post.
Zondo, who chaired the State Capture Commission, this week handed the 5th report to President Cyril Ramaphosa.
In the report, Zondo said there were “too many unsatisfactory features” in the testimony of Mentor and her evidence was “not enough to justify a finding”.
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She appeared before the Zondo Commission in August 2018 and claimed that one-day in October 2010 she travelled with one of the Gupta brothers, Ajay, and he told her that he wanted to make her a minister of public enterprise.
Mentor said that she first got a call from the then presidential deputy director-general Lakela Kaunda after she had made an appointment of meeting with former President Jacob Zuma.
She said instead of meeting with Zuma she found herself traveling with Ajay from Cape Town to the Gupta’s Saxonworld home where Ajay promised her the ministerial job so that she cancels the SAA’s flight between India and South Africa in favour of a company owned by the Guptas to take over the route.
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But Zondo says Mentor’s evidence contradicted version of events as there was no single record she ever travelled in a plane on that particular day.
“No Parliamentary records about her trip could be found that could corroborate her evidence that she had undertaken an official trip from Cape Town to Johannesburg on the day in question,” said Zondo.
After Mentor’s appearance at the commission, Kaunda drafted and submitted an affidavit to the commission, disputing the claims by Mentor, even submitting the records of her office to prove that she never had any communication with Mentor.
Said Zondo: “In my view, Ms Kaunda made no such call. I therefore consider very carefully whether Ms Mentor’s testimony can broadly be believed.”
Zondo said even the description of the Gupta house that Mentor gave to the commission had been found to be untrue after an inspection of the Gupta house was conducted.
“I consider that there are too many unsatisfactory features in Ms Mentor’s evidence,” said Zondo, adding that it would be hard for him to say Mentor’s evidence is “true”.
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“Although there are features which count in her favour, in my view, there is not enough to justify a finding that the incident did take place,” concludes Zondo said.
Zondo added that it was strange that Mentor told MP Dennis Bloem about the event and not her close friends.
“The close friendship that she had had with them for many years was such that in my view there is no way that she would not have told them about what had happened to her at the Gupta residence if the incident had happened, and if she had told them, there is no way that both would not have remembered that she had told them about such an incident.
“It seems to me that she never told them. It is true that she told Mr [Dennis] Bloem but it’s strange that she told Mr Bloem and did not tell even one of her two close friends,” Zondo said.
(edited by ZK)
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