Cape Town — Parliament’s ethics committee chairman Luwellyn Landers came under fire yesterday for failing to interrogate the alleged involvement of African National Congress (ANC) MP Danny Olifant in a fraud scandal.

Olifant is also one of the 28 MPs, former MPs and travel agents indicted in the Cape High Court on charges of fraud relating to the abuse of parliamentary travel vouchers.

In another Cape High Court case, Oliphant and two of his colleagues serving on the Atlantis Economic Development Trust board of trustees were alleged to have defrauded the trust of nearly R3m through their companies, Quantum Leap and Global Dinamix.

Olifant was a former chairman of the trust but resigned from the body last month, allegedly because he feared legal prosecution by German company MAN Ferrostaal, which lent R25m to the trust as part of the arms deal offset programme.

MAN Ferrostaal has applied for the provisional liquidation of the trust on the grounds that it cannot pay its debts and has liabilities of about R2,5m.

The company has also alleged that it gave R2m to the trust for the purchase of premises but that this was not used for that purpose as the trust used a donated property.

Democratic Alliance trade and industry spokesman Pierre Rabie said he had written to Landers (also an ANC MP) in July to request that the ethics committee call Olifant to explain his alleged role in the trust affair. Landers, however, had failed to respond and “to take any action that would befit the chairperson of a parliamentary ethics committee”.

Rabie said Olifant needed to explain why his links with the trust, Quantum Leap and Global Dinamix were not disclosed in the register of members’ interests; what the nature of his role was at the trust; and why he was implicated in the alleged fraud scandal.

“The ethics committee has a duty to ensure that MPs act in a manner befitting public representatives and that they are suitably censured when not doing so. Mr Olifant cannot continue to serve the public while being embroiled in these financial scandals.”

With acknowledgement to Linda Ensor and Business Day.