DTI slaps down DA spokesman for attack on Cipro

The Department of Trade and Industry has slapped down a junior spokesman for the Democratic Alliance, Jacques Smalle, for demanding that the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office be criminally investigated and put under administration.

"The statement reflects opportunistic obsession with events of the past which Cipro has been responding to for a while now, and is successfully transcending through series of interventions to strengthen administrative controls and close loopholes that are being identified," the DTI said on Wednesday.

The department said it is "puzzled and dismayed by the DA's alarmist statement, and can only attribute it to the fact that the new Shadow Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Jacques Smalle is not properly briefed."

The DTI explained that the latest intervention by Cipro is the recent call on companies to reconfirm their directors on the Cipro database, to which the response is encouraging.

"All of this work, including data-cleansing exercise being conducted with the support of Statistics SA, the results of which will be released shortly - is part of the ground work for the establishment of Company and Intellectual Property Commission in terms of the new 2008 Companies Act," the DTI said.

"The Commission will take over all the functions currently residing with Cipro, and will be under an overhauled management and leadership structure which will be directly accountable to parliament. Cipro will consequently cease to exist."

"The DA has been engaging the DTI and is fully apprised of these matters and the DTI's modernisation agenda for this area." - I-Net Bridge