Dirty Tricks To Discredit Me, Says Key Witness Against Zuma

Forensic auditor claims that despite KPMG apology there is good evidence that SARS rogue unit did exist

A​SENIOR FINANCIAL INVESTIGATOR lined up to be a key prosecution witness in the state’s forthcoming corruption trial against former President Jacob Zuma believes there is a political campaign under way to discredit him and get him off the case.

The investigator is forensic auditor Johan van der Walt, the highly regarded former KPMG partner who led the 30-strong KPMG South Africa team which concluded that an illegal, covert and rogue intelligence unit had operated within the South African Revenue Service.

Last September KPMG International sensationally ordered the withdrawal of the report’s findings and conclusions and in the aftermath, nine of the firm’s senior South African executives, including CEO Trevor Hoole and head of forensics Herman de Beer, were forced to resign.

Van der Walt is also the author of an earlier 2005 KPMG report commissioned by the state into the nub of the pending case against Jacob Zuma – 783 alleged payments to the former president that were handled by Schabir Shaik, the businessman who acted as Zuma’s financial adviser. Most of these funds ultimately emanated from foreign companies associated with the arms deals concluded by the government in 1999. Zuma is accused of illicitly pocketing a total of R4,072,499 from these payments.

Van der Walt has told friends that the ongoing rubbishing of his KPMG report into the SARS unit is deliberate – and designed to discredit him as a prosecution witness. “It’s a political thing, to get me out of the prosecution of Zuma,” he told them. Van der Walt, who resigned from KPMG in January 2017, does not deny saying this, but refuses to repeat or elaborate on his fears to Noseweek. He declines to be interviewed.