- Retired Supreme Court of Appeal President Lex Mpati has closed the investigation into the Ismail Abramjee text saga.
- In his report, Mpati cleared Constitutional Court justices and administration staff of leaking the court’s dismissal of Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s rescission.
- Mpati stressed that there was no evidence that Judge Kollapen was, or could have been, a source of confidential information for Abramjee.
Retired Supreme Court of Appeal President Lex Mpati, who was appointed to investigate the Ismail Abramjee text saga, has cleared Constitutional Court justices and administration staff of leaking the court’s dismissal of Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s rescission.
In a report Mpati submitted to Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, he said: "The nature and content of the text message was alleged to suggest that Mr Abramjee had inside knowledge of the matter in the Constitutional Court and its pending judgement which was yet to be delivered which suggested further that information was leaked to Mr Abramjee."
Abramjee allegedly sent an SMS to Parliament’s legal counsel, advocate Andrew Breitenbach, regarding the outcome of Mkhwebane's Constitutional Court challenge.
In Abramjee's text message to Breitenbach, he claimed that he had it "on very good authority that the ConCourt has declined to hear the Public Protector’s rescission application".
Mpati said the ultimate finding of the exercise was: "An assessment of the Constitutional Court domain and network revealed that there was no email communication to the effect that will support the allegations of an information leak in the form of an email from the Constitutional Court users."
According to Mkhwebane's preliminary investigation into Abramjee’s text message, there were 18 calls between him and Justice Jody Kollapen.
Mpati said there was no evidence whatsoever that Kollapen was, or could have been, a source of confidential information for Abramjee.
The report said:
Mpati maintained the other messages sent by Abramjee to Breitenbach did not constitute evidence or proof that Kollapen, or anyone at the Constitutional Court, had been passing on confidential information to Abramjee, but merely showed that the latter had communicated with Breitenbach in the past.
"The Judges' clerks could also not have been in a position to leak the final decision to Mr Abramjee, since it was to be finalised only at the final conference on 4 May 2022, while the controversial SMS was sent to Adv Breitenbach SC on 24 April 2022," the report added.
The Office of the Chief Justice said in a statement on Friday evening: "The matter is regarded as closed."
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