Earlier this month, Public Protector Lawrence Mushwana issued a report on allegations that Deputy President Jacob Zuma did not abide by the executive ethics code.

A daily newspaper then published a story on the basis of this report under the singleword headline "Cleared", suggesting that the report had found nothing untoward.

This was miles from the truth, and the newspaper did the right thing by correcting the report the next day.

The reason for the confusion was that the report did not make any judgment on a host of transactions that took place between Durban businessman Schabir Shaik and Zuma on the basis that it was sub judice.

In itself this is a questionable decision, since Zuma himself has not been charged. But Mushwana says he intends taking the case up again when the Shaik case is concluded.

Several other transactions were conducted before the ethics legislation was promulgated, so they were not probed either.

But there were two solitary transactions that could not be ignored for one reason or another. One of these involves a loan by a company by the name of Cay Nominees and a company owned by Zuma called Michigan Ivestments CC.

Here is where it gets interesting.

The companies register records that Cay Nominees has a single director, a peripatetic and extremely wealthy businessman by the name of Jurgen Kögl.

Kögl has a fascinating but littleknown history. He has only rarely been mentioned in the press. His most important political intervention by far was the role he played in securing the participation of the right wing in the 1994 election.

But even before this event, Kögl was clearly heavily involved in politics, and not only the politics of the right wing.

In an extract from his still to be published biography of President Thabo Mbeki, journalist and writer Mark Gevisser noted Kögl's involvement with senior ANC members.

Gevisser writes: "In August 1993, accompanied only by Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki slipped out of a national working committee meeting at the World Trade Centre to be whisked off, in a hired Fiat Uno driven by his close friend Jurgen Kögl, to a pigeon-racing club in Lynnwood, Pretoria.

"Kogl, in whose Hillbrow penthouse the Mbekis had been living for the past two years, had set up a secret rendezvous for Mbeki and Zuma to meet three prominent Afrikaners who were rattling the sabres of civil war: Gen Constand Viljoen and the heads of the Transvaal and Free State agricultural unions, Dries Bruwer and Piet Gouws."

The result was an agreement that the right wing would participate in the elections, and Kögl himself apparently signed the agreement.

Kögl is now a political consultant in part collaboration with former Progressive Federal Party leader Van Zyl Slabbert. His interests are understood to range from arms to oil to banking. The description of business on the Cay Nominees register includes "financial intermediation".

But the question now is this: why is a businessman with heavyweight political connections making loans to the deputy president, and are they in fact loans at all?

One might hope that the public protector, the guardian of the public interest, the only person allowed to see the confidential section of the register apart from the declarant and a secretary, might have paid attention to this issue.

But Mushwana's report seems to bend over backwards to avoid asking any question that might be remotely relevant. The report concludes: "Zuma's liability in regards to the loan was declared in the confidential part of the register. From the declaration it is clear that his liability includes interest on the loan. Zuma confirmed this in his response to the Registrar of Members' Interests."

It then continues at length about the fact that it was not the intention of the code to improperly impair the rights of members of the executive to own property or to engage in business relationships and the rights of privacy accorded by the constitution.

So are these loans or "loans"? In reply to questions about the report, Mushwana says he has seen the loan agreement. But he will not say how much money was involved. Ditto to the question of what interest rate was being charged.

And here is the crunch question: has any money been paid back against these loans that are now two and three years old? Mushwana says he simply does not know.

He says he was not required to investigate the merits and details of Zuma's liabilities, but rather whether he conformed to the requirements of the code by disclosing them. "No allegation of improper enrichment or improper advantage was made by the complainant."

This is an extraordinary statement for someone whose job it is to investigate improper enrichment or improper advantage. As the old adage says, there are none so blind as those that will not see.

With acknowledgements to Tim Cohen and the Business Day.