Moraadi Cholota, a former personal assistant to corruption-accused ex-Free State premier Ace Magashule, wants the Bloemfontein High Court to declare the fraud and corruption charges against her unconstitutional and invalid. She also claims the state’s conduct during her extradition makes the action unlawful.
Cholota has filed an application in the Bloemfontein High Court to have the charges against her dismissed. The case is scheduled for Monday, August 26.
The state will deny Cholota’s allegations and oppose her request to drop the charges.
This comes a week after Magistrate Estelle de Lange of the Bloemfontein court Cholota was given a bail of R2,500 after she found out she was not a flight risk.
Cholota arrived at Oliver Tambo International Airport on August 8 after delivery from the United States.
She is one of the suspects, along with Magashule, in the R255 million Free State asbestos scandal, facing five charges including fraud and corruption.
The other co-defendants are businessman Edwin Sodi; former Director-General of the National Department of Housing, Thabane Zulu; Nthimotse Mokhesi, Mahlomola Matlakala, Sello Radebe, Adel Kgotso Manyeki, Nozipho Molikoe, Albertus Venter, Margaret-Ann Diedericks and former Mangaung Mayor Olly Mlamleli.
The indicted companies include Blackhead Consulting, 602 Consulting Solutions, Mastertrade 232 and Ori Group.
Cholota reportedly instructed the late businessman Igo Mpambani, Sodi’s business partner, to make payments to third parties; this was done ostensibly on behalf of Magashule.
For example, in August 2015, Mpambani used part of the proceeds from the asbestos contract to pay for the education of the daughter of then acting judge Refiloe Mokoena, who was studying at a college in the United States.
In April 2024, she was arrested in the US and a court heard that South African authorities had charged her with four counts of fraud and five counts of corruption.
‘State witness’
Cholota explained in a 32-page incorporation memorandum why she wanted the charges against her dropped.
The respondents in the case are the Free State Directorate of Public Prosecutions, the Minister of Police and Captain Benjamin Calitz of the Hawks, who was part of the investigation team that questioned Cholota in Baltimore, Maryland. His sworn statement also served as the basis for the state’s request for Cholota’s extradition.
Cholota’s papers describe how she gave oral testimony in 2019 before the Zondo Commission. She said she was shocked when she later learned she would be a state witness.
“I found out that I would be a state witness after the prosecution in the criminal asbestos project case was announced as such on national television. Prior to this televised announcement, I had never known or been contacted by the National Prosecuting Authority or any of its prosecutors and investigators,” she said in her sworn statement at the Bloemfontein High Court this week.
“I think it was unfair to me when the public prosecutor stated in court and in the presence of the examining magistrate that [a] “I told the TV camera that I am a state witness without knowing it,” she said.
“I am confused because as a PA in the Prime Minister’s office I was nowhere near the supply chain management of departments or the Department of Human Settlements.
“I feel like you are ordering me to witness something I have no intimate knowledge of.”
‘Intimidation’
Cholota said she was giving evidence at the Zondo Commission after former Free State economic development minister Dukwana Mxolisi told the inquiry that Magashule had asked Mpambani to pay for the studies of students, both locally and abroad. Mxolisi said Magashule was acting like “Santa Claus”.
“I assisted the Commission in distinguishing between the bursary schemes and the student financial assistance schemes. I explained my duties within the Prime Minister’s Office,” Cholota said in her court papers, adding that Dukwana’s testimony was “quite speculative and misinformed”.
According to Cholota, SAPS and FBI agents arrived unannounced at her US apartment in September 2021. She was taken to the Sheraton Hotel in Baltimore for a witness interview.
“On the first day, the line of questioning was very different from the line of questioning I was subjected to at the State Capture Commission. That surprised me, because I had the impression that I was being questioned about that.
“In fact, the manner of questioning was so different that I felt uncomfortable because the investigators pressured me to speak about facts I knew nothing about, as if I did, and to confirm knowledge of facts that were far outside my position as a former PA,” her sworn statement reads.
On the second day of questioning, she claims the investigators presented her with the same facts, and when she was unable or refused to provide “useful” answers, they threatened her that if she continued “with what she had done the previous day,” they would treat her as a suspect.
“The NPA investigators threatened, intimidated and coerced me that if I continued to not corroborate facts I knew nothing about and refused to make statements on matters I knew nothing about as PA to Magashule, they would press charges against me and I would be joined with the rest of the co-accused in the case.”
Cholota claims that her prosecution was not brought with the aim of obtaining a conviction.
“Instead, my prosecution was initiated after I was subjected to threats, intimidation, coercion and mental torture and is a continuation of such aims.”
She also argued that if the state had reasonable and probable cause, she and her co-defendants would have been charged in 2020 and not in response to her refusal to submit to intimidation.
No basis for fraud allegations
In her affidavit, Cholota alleges that the Public Protector Investigated the asbestos project and that she was not named or accused of any irregularities. Nor was it mentioned that the Office of the Prime Minister’s grant and financial assistance program improperly or unlawfully received funding from the proceeds of the asbestos project.
She said she was also not named in the Special Investigations Unit’s report on the case.
She requested that “the court declare that the conduct of the investigators and prosecutors in my case falls short of the constitutionally intended course of justice and be declared unconstitutional and invalid.”
“Declare that my prosecution has no probable and reasonable basis, as every report from the state authorities has shown that such basis is absent.” DM
Daily Maverick
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