Public Protector, Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane, has lost another court battle in the ongoing saga of the so-called SARS rogue unit.
Today, the Pretoria High Court set aside her report into the unit and ordered her to personally pay 15% of the legal costs of the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, and former SARS employees Ivan Pillay and George Magashula.
The court, which accused advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane of "bias" and "blatant dishonesty" in the matter, said her investigation fell outside of the jurisdiction of the Public Protector as it related to events dating back to 2009/2010.
Furthermore, the court found that no exceptional circumstances have been presented by the Public Protector justifying the investigation.
The court also questioned the manner in which Mkwebane engaged with Gordhan's attorneys of record, publishing notices on Youtube before giving any notice to the Minister or his legal team.
The Court found that she continued to rely on the discredited KPMG report into the matter as well as the Sikhakhane report "despite it being widely discredited".
The Pretoria High Court said that the previous Public Protector received a similar complaint in 2014 about the unit but "elected not to investigate the complaint" but that Advocate Mkhwebane still chose to go ahead with the investigation.
"The Public Protector's pandering of the rogue-unit narrative and her public reference to the unit as 'rogue unit' and as a 'monster' and her stated desire to 'defeat the monster' displays a profound bias towards Minister Gordhan and Mr Pillay," the court found.
