WATCH: Mkhwebane wants perjury charges withdrawn

 

She made her first appearance in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Thursday morning.

 

The three charges were laid by the head of Accountability Now, Advocate Paul Hoffman, in 2019 after the Constitutional Court found that Mkhwebane had lied in her Absa Bankorp report.

 

This relates to the investigation Mkhwebane’s office did about apartheid era loans paid by the Reserve Bank to Absa in the 1980s.

 

Magistrate Adriaan Bekker postponed the case to March 25 for the state to prepare for pre-trial proceedings.

 

Mkhwebane's lawyer, Advocate Dali Mpofu, told the court they plan to make representations for the matter to be withdrawn.

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Mpofu added should his team fail, they will approach the High Court.

 

Spokesperson for the National Prosecuting Authority, Sipho Ngwenya, told the media outside court the charges relate to the conversations Mkhwebane had with then president Jacob Zuma regarding her investigation.

"She is facing three allegations of lying under oath coming from that report. The first allegation is about a meeting she had with former President Jacob Zuma. She said they only had one meeting, but the truth is opposite to that. The second charge is about what she said she discussed with Zuma. She said they discussed his response to the findings, but again the truth points to the opposite. The third charge was that they only discussed the preliminary report, but our investigation points to the opposite," explained Ngwenya.

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