New Sunday Times editor, Bongani Siqoko, has admitted the newspaper made several errors in its reporting on the National Research Group within SARS, which has become the subject of a Hawks investigation into finance minister, Pravin Gordhan.
Gordhan was head of SARS when the unit was established.
In a lengthy explanation published in the Sunday Times today, Siqoko said: “Did we get everything right with our SARS story? No. Did we get everything wrong? Again the answer is no.”
He went on to say: “Today we admit to you that we got some things wrong.”
He wrote that SARS had, in fact, received approval to set up the National Research Group within the National Intelligence Agency from then finance minister, Trevor Manuel. “The unit was not in the end set up within the NIA but became a unit within SARS.”
“We stated some allegations as fact, and gave incomplete information in some cases. In trying to inform you about SARS, we should have provided you with all the dimensions of the story and not overly relied on our sources.”
He said that it had not been factually established that the unit had bugged President Jacob Zuma’s residence and that it had set up a brothel to trap tax cheats.
“We wrongly stated as fact in the headline and in some parts of the story that the unit had set up its own brothel. In fact this was an allegation from a former member of the unit.”
Siqoko said the newspaper was working on “strengthening our quality assurance and editorial testing processes regarding our major front-page stories.”
Two of those accused in the newspaper's reports of being behind illegal activities in the 'rogue unit', Johann van Loggerenberg and Ivan Pillay were given space to state their side of the story. Both were fired from SARS.
Pillay said: "In time, full measure of the damage caused to the South African Revenue Service arising from false news coverage will manifest itself in a tarnished reputation, questionable independence and lower levels of compliance with tax and customs law. Make no mistake. This is about far more than us losing our jobs."
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