The following year Noseweek revealed, in its April 2006 edition, that regular payments had been made by Oasis to Hlophe between April 2002 and March 2003. The magazine noted that Hlophe had "secretly" gone onto Oasis's payroll "after Oasis had got into a legal dispute with his colleague on the bench, Judge Siraj Desai.... Oasis needed the judge president's consent to sue a judge. Hlophe gave it. No wonder Desai is challenging Oasis to prove that Hlophe's permission was ‘properly sought and given'!"
The allegations were explosive because, in terms of the law [PDF], no judge "may, without the consent of the Minister, accept, hold or perform any other office of profit or receive in respect of any service fees, emoluments or other remuneration apart from his or her [judicial] salary." Initially, Hlophe denied Noseweek's claims outright, telling one newspaper on March 30 "I'm not on a retainer from Oasis or anybody. I am not so stupid to receive a retainer from any party".
On March 31 he told Sapa that "I'm not on any retainer." When asked whether he had ever been on a retainer during his tenure as judge president, he replied: "No." On the same day he told Sue Segar of the Witness, "I have said it before, I am denying this." When Segar told him that she had seen a print-out of the Oasis ledgers showing entries made to a J. Hlope, he responded: "I have not seen anything like that myself. I cannot possibly say anything about something I have not seen."
In a long statement issued on April 1 Hlophe seemed to backtrack on these earlier denials. He now stated that, "It is clear from the books of account of Oasis, that remuneration for out-of-pocket expenses had been received." He suggested that former Justice Minister, Dullah Omar, had known about and approved of his relationship with Oasis. He also accused Desai of leaking the information about the payments to Martin Welz, the editor of Noseweek.
