The battle between former Justice Minister Penuell Maduna and his ex-wife escalated this week, with Nompumelelo Maduna claiming he had ‘concocted’ a story to get out of sharing the millions from his empowerment deal with his family, says a Sunday Times report. Nompumelelo filed court papers in response to an urgent application by Penuell in the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) last month, in which he claimed she was trying to dupe him out of his R10.8m portion of Sasol dividends.

The stand-off between the two, who were divorced in 2013, is set to head back to court after Nompumelelo’s latest attack. Penuell has already asked the court to withdraw her affidavit from court records. He initially approached the court claiming his wife had changed, without his knowledge, the beneficiaries of a holding company he had created in 2005 for payouts in Sasol’s BB-BEE deal.

He claimed she had deleted his 51% stake, diverting it to her family trust, of which he was not a member. The first dividend was paid out last month.

But Nompumelelo – the COO of Nooa Petroleum – paints a different picture in her responding papers. She says Penuell has not been left penniless and has already received R32m through the family trust, which she insists has always been the main beneficiary of the holding company – called Ngazana – they had set up.

Penuell’s lawyer Andries Hansen confirmed he had filed a rule 30 notice that Nompumelelo’s answering affidavit was an irregular step. The notice calls for her to withdraw her affidavit from the court file because it was filed after the application had been struck off the roll, and it did not respond to each allegation made by Penuell.

Full Sunday Times report (subscription needed)