Ajay Gupta denies meeting Daniels

LIES, lies and more lies. That sums up a statement from Ajay Gupta’s lawyer who charged, in a letter to the Parliament’s inquiry into corruption at Eskom, that his client was nowhere near Melrose Arch last July as claimed by suspended Eskom head of legal and compliance Suzanne Daniels.

Instead Ajay Gupta was 8 087km away in eastern India, participating in a Hindu festival where he was giving a speech, providing evidence of his exit stamp on his passport and the flight plan of his private jet. There is also a YouTube clip which had been taken on July 29, the same day Daniels claimed to have met him alongside Deputy Minister of Public Enterprises Ben Martins, Salim Essa and Duduzane Zuma.

Martins has been subpoenaed to appear before the inquiry, a move he slammed in a statement from his office.

Gupta’s lawyer, Goitse Pilane, had not provided a link to the video but instead a screenshot of the middle Gupta brother at the festival.

The letter, alongside another one from Ahmed Gani, also representing Ajay Gupta, stated the Gupta family had been “wrongly implicated” in malfeasance by witnesses at the Eskom inquiry “through testimony and many documents before you”.

Instead Ajay Gupta offered to testify before the committee, stating that he and his brothers would be available to testify after January 15 provided they were given questions from the committee before their appearance.

The inquiry is expected to resume by the middle of next month.

While the letters were being handed to members of Parliament’s public enterprises portfolio committee, the inquiry’s chairperson Zukiswa Rantho said she had been informed that there were members of the Hawks inside the Old Assembly chamber who had wanted to get her details.

This, she viewed as suspicious and a form of intimidation, telling her colleagues that she was disturbed and could no longer go ahead with chairing the inquiry. After a 15-minute break, MPs returned and Rantho was replaced in the chair by the chairperson of the committee Lungi Mnganga-Gcabashe. She said there had been a “misunderstanding” with the Hawks’ officers who had been at the meeting of Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts where it was probing matters related to corruption at Transnet.

“We want to apologise in the manner the matter (Hawks presence) was conveyed to the chairperson (Rantho) of the inquiry. It should have been done before the meeting started … ,” said MngangaGcabashe.

Eskom acting board chairperson Zethemba Khoza told Parliament that the board had been proactive in dealing with corruption.