News24 | Magashule’s ex-PA Cholota loses another legal challenge to her asbestos scam prosecution

The Free State High Court in Bloemfontein has dismissed the latest bid by former Free State premier Ace Magashule’s ex-PA, Moroadi Cholota.

• Former Free State premier Ace Magashule’s ex-PA, Moroadi Cholota, was initially expected to be a State witness in the NPA’s “asbestos scam” prosecution against him, tenderpreneur Edwin Sodi, and others.
• After Cholota failed to cooperate, she was extradited from the US and charged alongside her former boss.
• Cholota then launched multiple legal challenges to the legality of the case against her, all of which ultimately failed. Her latest appeal bid was dismissed by the Free State High Court.

The Free State High Court in Bloemfontein has dismissed the latest bid by former Free State premier Ace Magashule’s ex-PA, Moroadi Cholota, to challenge the legality of her “asbestos scam” extradition and prosecution.

Cholota had briefly won her freedom after Judge Phillip Loubser found that a Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) ruling barred the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) from seeking her extradition from the US, where she was studying. The Constitutional Court overturned that decision, but said Cholota would still be able to pursue a “special plea” challenge to the legality of her extradition.

That special plea, where Cholota claimed that the State had repeatedly lied to US authorities about the case against her during its successful application for her extradition, was dismissed by Loubser.

Cholota then sought to reserve “questions of law” in relation to that dismissal ruling – which would then enable her to challenge it in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).

READ | ‘No reasonable prospect’: State slaps back at Cholota’s appeal bid

In a nine-page ruling, Loubser has now agreed with the NPA that all the issues raised by Cholota were questions of fact and not law, thereby blocking her path to an SCA appeal. She can, however, attempt to petition the SCA directly for a hearing.

The “questions of law” raised by Cholota include her assertion that the NPA lied to US authorities that she was “part of a syndicate” with murdered tenderpreneur Igo Mpambani, who, alongside businessman Edwin Sodi, was a major beneficiary of the R255-million asbestos audit and removal tender that the State alleges was defined by corruption, fraud and money laundering.

At one stage, Cholota had been a potentially pivotal witness for the State, which is attempting to prove that Magashule was embroiled in that scheme, that allegedly saw five high-ranking Free State government officials receiving R27 million in bribes from money meant to fund the removal of harmful asbestos from the homes of the province’s poorest residents.

She was extradited and charged after she refused to cooperate with authorities – and insists she was only prosecuted because she refused to implicate Magashule in the alleged asbestos removal scam, where the State says Sodi and more than a dozen of his co-accused embarked on a rent-seeking scheme that ultimately resulted in only R21 million worth of work being done.

READ | Ace Magashule’s ex-PA’s legal team optimistic about appeal

To make matters worse, payments of R139 million were made by the Free State government as part of this allegedly corrupt scheme after the Auditor-General found that the asbestos contract was unlawful.

It is the State’s case that Magashule’s alleged reward for these continued payments came in the form of school tuition for his former classmate and former acting Judge Refiloe Mokoena’s daughter, electronic tablets, and R250 000 for the travel expenses of an ANC delegation to Cuba.

Those alleged gratifications were given through payments made by Sodi’s subsequently murdered business associate, Igo Mpambani, following email requests made by Cholota.

Cholota and her lawyers had sought to reserve a question of law because Loubser found, in relation to her “special plea” attack on her extradition, that “although this court has not yet heard evidence in the main trial yet, it is clear from the quoted passages in the forensic audit that Ms Cholota had requested payments from Mr Mpambani after his company had received payments for the asbestos project while no work in the project had been done”.

Loubser continued: “It is clear from a proper reading of this passage that the court did not make any findings concerning the existence of a syndicate involving [Cholota] and others. The court merely responded to the fourth ground of the special plea claiming that the State had lied to US authorities that [Cholota] was part of a syndicate, thereby pointing out that such information came from an independent forensic audit before the extradition court, and not from the State per se. Accordingly, there was no misdirection by the court, and the question pertains to a matter of fact, not of the law”.