The Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture on Monday heard how former Eskom executives, including both the chairman and finance director, took orders and leaked confidential company documents to people associated with the Gupta family.
On his last day of evidence about corruption at the utility, Eskom chairman Jabu Mabuza told the commission that the former head of the generation division, Matshela Koko, former chairman Ben Ngubane, chief financial officer Anoj Singh and former head of legal and company secretary Suzanne Daniels leaked confidential information.
This was through an e-mail address used by Salim Essa, an associate of the controversial Gupta family and majority shareholder in Trillian Capital, Eric Wood, Mohammed Bobat and Fahima Badat, all executives of advisory firm Regiments Capital.
Mabuza’s evidence confirmed under oath the information published in this newspaper and in other media following the leak of a trove of e-mails from the Gupta family companies in 2017.
The first batch of e-mails was sent on July 20 2015, the day Koko was reinstated in his job following his suspension with three other executives four months earlier.
A few weeks after the e-mails, Eskom issued a tender and invited global management company McKinsey to bid for it without opening the tender to competitors. Mckinsey won the contract and brought in Essa’s Trillian as a minority partner.
Under the contract, Eskom paid the parties R1.6bn for six months of work that Eskom later admitted had produced no value for the utility. McKinsey has since paid about R1bn back to Eskom, together with an additional R100m in interest. Eskom is still trying to recoup the R600m it paid to Trillian through a court process.
Trillian denies any wrongdoing.
“The pattern we are picking up here is on this day‚ on returning to office‚ Koko sends this material to Essa to demonstrate to Essa what business opportunities exist in Eskom,” said Mabuza. He told the commission, which is investigating allegations of corruption related to state capture at key state institutions, that the electricity producer obtained the information after a court process and from servers and the laptop that had been allocated for Koko's use."
The first e-mail, sent at 7.56am to a person named “Businessman” on the address infoportal@zoho.com, contained a confidential document in which the National Treasury was directing public entities on how to contain their procurement costs. A minute later Koko sent another e-mail to the same address.
Eskom’s forensic investigations have since revealed “Businessman” to be Salim Essa, said Mabuza. Koko resigned from Eskom an hour before his disciplinary hearing on the matter was to be heard, frustrating attempts to hold him accountable, said Mabuza.
Evidence leader Vincent Maleka said Koko has furnished the commission with his version, which will be tested when he presents evidence before the commission in the coming weeks. Daniels and Singh will also appear before the commission to give evidence and respond to the allegations.
“What should not be lost in this is that these were classified, confidential documents,” said Mabuza.
On December 8 2015 Singh sent an e-mail with a proposed Eskom board resolution for the Optimum Coal mine to Koko. The Gupta family, through Tegeta Exploration & Resources, was in talks to buy the company from Glencore.
The e-mail originated from Regiments Capital executive Fahima Badat, who had also copied colleagues Mohammed Bobat, Wood and Essa.
Singh then forwarded the document to Koko, who was head of generation. The Eskom board later adopted the round robin resolution. The resolution was for Eskom to advance a R1.6bn guarantee to Absa, which allowed Tegeta to acquire Optimum from Glencore.
Said Mabuza: “These people drafted a resolution for the board of Eskom and sent it to Singh, who sent it to Koko for introduction to the Eskom board.”
Following the adoption of the resolution, which gave Glencore comfort that Tegeta had access to funds to acquire the Optimum asset, legal head Daniels drafted an agreement which was then shared with Regiments’ Wood and “Businessman”.
Mabuza also testified that within a few days of the information being shared with Gupta entities, Koko, his wife Elizabeth and son travelled to Dubai after Salim Essa arranged for his visa and accommodation.
Correction: 26 February
The article was corrected to remove reference to the Gupta family in the last paragraph.
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