Picture for illustrative purposes. Julius Malema with self-confessed tobacco smuggler Adriano Mazzotti (on the left). In the middle is American DJ "Little Louis" Vega.
Investigative journalist and author of The President’s Keepers Jacques Pauw has responded to Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema, saying he will not apologise.
Malema, during a press conference on Wednesday, threatened to take legal action against Pauw after the journalist suggested Malema had been saved by a controversial cigarette smuggler to settle his tax bill.
Pauw made the accusation on social media, accusing Malema of securing money from Adriano Mazzotti to resolve his tax woes.
The author believes this to be among the reasons EFF chairperson Dali Mpofu is defending suspended SA Revenue Service (Sars) boss Tom Moyane.
Malema called Pauw a liar, and said he authorised a lawyers’ letter giving Pauw three days to withdraw the statement that claimed Mazzotti paid his tax through a loan.
“I have no such loan,” said Malema.
Pauw responded in an explosive letter that surfaced on Friday morning:
You call on me to set the record straight. You are right, I was wrong in saying that you received a loan from Mazzotti to pay your tax bill.
You in fact received a R1 million loan from Kyle Phillips – a business partner of Mazzotti and his co-director in Carnilinx, an independent tobacco company.
This was reported in the Sunday Times and other newspapers in 2015. The Sunday Times quoted your lawyer as saying that you took the loan from Phillips after another benefactor failed to make a payment to you.
The newspaper said that you had admitted to Sars that you had received the R1 million loan from Phillips.
You never denied any of these reports. I therefore assume that it is safe to say that it was true that you had received a R1 million loan from Phillips.
Investigative journalist Jacques Pauw. (Photo by Gallo Images / Alet Pretorius)
Pauw said he would not apologise as Mazzotti and Phillips were partners in crime, as they both had a 16.6% share in Carnilinx.
Pauw claims the R200 000 paid by Carnilinx in 2014 for the EFF’s registration could be seen as Malema accepting the proceeds of crime.
His letter continued:
After Tom Moyane became Sars commissioner in October 2014, the Carnilinx tax bill simply disappeared.
When I wrote my book, I found a document dated March 2016, written by a Sars executive and addressed to none other than Moyane’s henchman, Jonas Makwakwa.
The letter summarised a meeting with Carnilinx. The executive recommended that since Carnilinx was investigated by the “rogue unit’, the entire case should be “re-audited”. He recommends that the Letters of Finding against Carnilinx be withdrawn.
Carnilinx, Mazzotti, Phillips and the others were off the hook. Years of painstaking examination and probing went down the drain.
Pauw ended the letter with a potent question to Malema.
“Do you know that apartheid assassin Craig Williamson was one of his business partners? And that you have been photographed with Mazzotti in the presence of self-confessed killer and gangster Mikey Schultz?”
EFF leader Julius Malema with, among others, Mikey Schultz and Adriano Mazzotti. Picture: Twitter/@SteveMotale
