KING HASN’T ABUSED FUNDS – PERCY

MBABANE – Percy Simelane, the Government Spokesperson, says His Majesty the King has not taken any money from the Central Bank of Swaziland.

He said reports published in the international media, to the effect that Swaziland had E8.1 million in its reserves because the King abused funds kept in the bank, were untrue.

Simelane said these were baseless allegations crafted by a careless journalist, who broke all journalism rules when he went out to exaggerate facts to make his story better.

He said government had launched investigations to find the source of the false news.
“We want to know which news agency and journalist started this fire because we believe it came from one agency and was copied by others,” he said.

He said in the investigation, government would try and establish which agency received an email from the Central Bank with the monetary policy statement which was misinterpreted by the media.
He said it was regrettable and unfortunate that while stretching facts, the journalist used the name of the King and purported that he abused the public funds.

He also said it was equally regrettable that the international media had published the false information about the King, the country and the Central Bank.
He identified the international press that published the false information as Al Jazeera, News 24, Sowetan, ANN7, South African Press Association (SAPA) and the Cape Times, among others.
Simelane said contrary to the reports that these agencies published, Swaziland had about E8.2 billion in the gross official reserves and the king had not taken a cent of that money.

The government mouthpiece said this in an interview yesterday.
He said the fact that Swaziland had about E8.2 billion in its reserves was stated by the Central Bank, in its Monetary Policy Consultative Committee (MPCC).

In this statement, it was also revealed that the funds were enough to cover 4.1 months of estimated imports of goods and services.
Simelane said funds kept in the Central Bank were above the internationally accepted level of three months of import cover.
He said the stories published in the international media were inaccurate in that while they rightly captured that the funds were enough for four months worth of imports, they were wrong about the funds held by the bank.

“This was a gross misrepresentation of facts by the journalist who initially wrote the story. The journalist broke the journalism golden rule that states that a story should not be made better or worse than it is,” he said.
He also said he was disappointed by editors of the news agency that published the reports that sanctioned the story for publication without considering twice or checking facts.

He said in a normal setup, an editor should have been alarmed by the notion that Swaziland was to survive for four months with only E8 million.
“He should have asked the reporter how a country could survive for four months with only E8 million in its coffers?”
While Simelane expressed his dismay about the reports on Central Bank funds, the bank has issued a statement demanding retraction of the report from the international media.

The bank did not stop there as it said it contemplated legal action against the news agencies.
In a statement published in the local media yesterday, the bank said Swaziland had E8.19 billion or about US$900 million in its reserves.
“In response to stories that were published by international-based media such as AFP, SAPA, News 24, Sowetan, ANN7 and the Cape Times, to the effect that Swaziland had less than US$1 million in reserves, a statement purportedly to have been extracted from the Central Bank of Swaziland’s Monetary Policy Consultative Committee (MPCC) press statement, as a bank we would like to distance ourselves from those stories and further state that such stories are factually wrong and misleading,” reads the statement in part.

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