ANC must open books - DA
2002-05-31 12:08
Cape Town - The Democratic Alliance has urged the African National Congress to also open its accounts to a forensic audit to establish whether they received donations from alleged
German fraudster Jürgen Harksen.
Battered by claims that it received funding from Harksen, the DA on Thursday appointed auditors Ernst and Young to conduct a
forensic audit of its books and those of the men at the centre of
the allegations, Cape Town mayor Gerald Morkel, who is the party's provincial leader, and chief fundraiser Leon Markovitz.
It also asked its former alliance partner, the New National
Party, to agree to a forensic audit of its accounts.
DA federal council chairman James Selfe said the request to the NNP had been made because "there have been some occasions the
accounts, although they were in the name of the DA, were in fact
run as component accounts".
"I think if we are going to get to the bottom of this, then we
are going to have to get to the bottom of the NNP accounts at that material time."
Giving notice of a motion in the National Assembly on Friday,
Selfe called on the ANC to disclose in full the donations it
received from foreign governments or heads of state.
It also "invited" the ANC to open its accounts to forensic audit and to establish whether it received any anonymous donations from any source, including Harksen.
'Foreign policy up for sale'
Allegations have been made that the ANC also received money from Harksen.
Among other attempts at damage control, the DA will
introduce a private member's bill in parliament soon to regulate foreign donations to political parties.
It envisages a total ban on foreign funding unless it comes from public sources open to all parties.
DA chief whip Douglas Gibson told reporters earlier in the week that such legislation also would protect South Africa from "the ANC having our foreign policy up for sale".
It was well known that the ANC received foreign funding from
sources around the world "to the tune of hundreds of
millions of rands and there is no accounting", he said.
- SAPA