Who is behind arrest of investigators accusing EC Premier Oscar Mabuyane of fraud?
Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane was fingered in a fraud investigation commissioned by the University of Fort Hare in 2019.
Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane. Picture: Kayleen Morgan/Eyewitness News
Bongani Bingwa speaks with Sarah Burger, Director of Horizon Forensics, about their investigation into Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane.
Click below to listen to the interview.
A forensic investigator tasked with looking into fraud and corruption at Fort Hare University has described being arrested and locked up for five days as 'traumatic.'
Sarah Burger of forensic law firm Horizon Forensics was appointed to investigate a myriad of allegations of wrongdoing at the university in 2019.
Among the fraud Burger and her colleagues claim to have uncovered were several allegations relating to Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane.
Horizon investigators say they found evidence that Mabuyane had been deregistered from a master’s programme after it was determined he had not met the minimum requirements.
Further investigations revealed he was allegedly not the author of his thesis.
Burger was tasked with investigating the fraud related to a university professor and 'The Big Student'.
"The initial investigation... dealt with many employees... then various instructions flowed from that over the years, mainly into individual employees at the university that were causing trouble in various departments."
- Sarah Burger, Director - Horizon Forensics
Burger describes how Horizons' investigations unearthed several corrupt schemes at the university.
"One of them was an employee that was selling registrations to some students that couldn't afford to pay their deficits... and then another person in the registrars department... would just wipe the debt out and sell the degree."
- Sarah Burger, Director - Horizon Forensics
Among the schemes discovered by Horizon was one involving 'The Big Student'.
"The Big Student is Premier Oscar Mabuyane and what we found was that his proposal was conceived of and mainly written by ghostwriters and titivated up to chapter stage."
- Sarah Burger, Director - Horizon Forensics
But the scandal didn't stop there.
"I had access to a number of mailboxes... We managed to piece together by reviewing and scrutinising hundreds of proposals... manually compared paraphrasing. We did a lot of digital comparisons on the documents."
- Sarah Burger, Director - Horizon Forensics
"Instead of being sent back to the student to say that it's maybe at 30% to 40% plagiarism, it would be sent back to the ghostwriter with a reprimand from the supervisor to say, you should have ensured that this plagerism was lower."
- Sarah Burger, Director - Horizon Forensics
"Prima facie evidence will show that these ghostwriters were the people that were drafting the proposal."
- Sarah Burger, Director - Horizon Forensics
In February, the Hawks arrived at Horizon Forensics’ Cape Town offices and Burger gave them a statement.
The following month, Burger and Horizons owner Bradley Conradie were arrested by the Hawks and flown by private jet to East London.
Burger says she spent five nights in police cells before being released on bail.
"It was traumatizing... we shook our heads and said this is absolutley unbelievable. More than 20 armed men came to collect us."
- Sarah Burger, Director - Horizon Forensics
"We were still working on a criminal complaint for the university at the very time I was arrested."
- Sarah Burger, Director - Horizon Forensics
Burger says the Hawks were also 'gobsmacked' by her arrest. She believes her arrest was due to political interference, to discredit them.
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