The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has become the latest law enforcement agency to aim its guns at former Free State premier Ace Magashule’s ex-personal assistant, Moroadi Cholota.
Sunday World can exclusively reveal that the SIU is investigating the source of Cholota’s funds to pay for her studies in the US.
The SIU’s investigation comes after it received a proclamation to investigate serious allegations of maladministration in the Office of the Premier in Free State where Cholota worked as Magashule’s personal assistant.
The investigation, which was kept hush hush, comes just two years after the Hawks and their American counterparts, the FBI, paid her a surprise visit in September 2021 at her US apartment in Baltimore and interrogated her about Magashule’s fraud and corruption case involving the audit and removal of asbestos roofing in Free State.
During the interrogation, the Hawks and FBI asked her about the source of her funds to pay for her studies.
She told Hawk’s Brigadier Nico Gerber that she started studying political science and international relations at Bay Atlantic University (BAU) in January 2020. At the time she applied to BAU, Cholota said, she was still employed in the premier’s office by Magashule’s successor, Sisi Ntombela.
Cholota told the investigators that she resigned sometime around June 2019, after which she applied for financial assistance from the provincial government following her acceptance at BAU and signed a funding agreement.
“The agreement makes it clear that if I do not graduate, then I have to pay the whole amount back,” she told the Hawks.
Cholota told the state capture commission of inquiry in December 2019 that there was a difference between the bursary scheme run by and disseminated by the Free State department of education and financial assistance disseminated to students by the office of the premier.
“Though this is an initiative of the department of education, many students would still approach the premier’s office either for more information on bursaries or for assistance when the department of education had reached the limit of students it could afford to award bursaries to.”
Cholota said that as a result of the limit and the resultant enquiries by deserving students in desperate need of financial assistance, Magashule elected to start assisting needy students who had good academic results with aid in the form of financial assistance or the provision of resources such as laptops.
“This was done by fundraising from various businesses, businessmen and women alike, that resided in or did business in the Free State province,” she said, adding that she was tasked with liaising with businesses and businesspeople in relation to this fundraising.
In June last year, the SIU issued a media statement that President Cyril Ramaphosa had authorised an investigation into allegations of serious maladministration in the Free State premier’s office.
The SIU said its probe would also focus on issues concerning the approval, allocation or payment of bursaries, including travel, accommodation and stipends to persons who were not entitled to funding or were given funding in a manner that contradicts the applicable manuals, policies, procedures, prescripts, instructions, or practices.
SIU spokesperson Kaizer Kga-nyago said the investigation was in progress, but the unit could not provide specific information with respect to individuals who may or may not be part of such a probe.
Kganyago said the investigation focused on the alleged wrongdoings set out in the proclamation and not on specific individuals.
Cholota would have been the state’s star witness in the asbestos case against Magashule and other co-accused, but after she refused to implicate her former boss in wrongdoing, the National Prosecuting Authority charged her with the same alleged crime.
Those in her camp told Sunday World that the SIU investigation appeared to be part of a pattern to punish her for refusing to become a state witness in the asbestos case.
In the asbestos case, the state alleges that Cholota facilitated corrupt transactions that personally benefited Magashule and that the funds were proceeds of crime from the R255-million tender in 2014 to audit and remove asbestos roofs from houses across the province.
The trial was due to begin tomorrow [April 15], but instead the parties will meet in the Bloemfontein High Court on April 18 for case management issues.
Pressed for comment, Cholota said she was not aware that the SIU was investigating her.
