The Sunday Times has reported that an MTN employee, who worked as a senior fraud analyst, sold the cellphone records of high-profile politicians and journalists to a Gupta-linked company.
According to the report, she was paid R3,750 by a private investigations company for the mobile phone records of Trevor Manuel, Tiso Blackstar editor-at-large Peter Bruce, and Financial Mail editor Rob Rose.
Manuel, Bruce, and Rose are outspoken critics of the Gupta family.
Part of these records were published on Wmcleaks.com – a fake news website – on 13 August.
Bank of Baroda CEO Manoj Kumar also featured in the Wmcleaks report, and is accused of being a sellout to white monopoly capital for trying to close Oakbay’s accounts.
“Trevor via an untraceable middle-man had carried out around 30 calls to the Chief Manager of Bank Of Baroda SA, Manoj Kumar Jha,” states Wmcleaks.
“Many calls between Trevor and Rose have been verified within the time frame of the Oakbay’s accounts closure in BOB regarding the creation of this intimidation scenario.”
The Wmcleaks report added that “Rob Rose was also in constant touch with Peter Bruce within the said time frame”.
Shortly before the Wmcleaks article, Bruce wrote a column titled The price of writing about the Guptas.
He provided details on how he was followed and photographed, accused of cheating on his wife, and attacked online.
MTN confirmed the transgression by the employee, who did not arrive for a disciplinary hearing and instead resigned from the company.
“Providing call data records of a third-party to anyone outside of MTN is a serious and major violation of MTN’s internal policies and procedures,” said MTN.
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