Koko to fight Outa charges
SUSPENDED Eskom acting chief executive officer Matshela Koko has vowed to fight against criminal charges opened against him by the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa).
“I am aware of the criminal charges against me and I will defend myself,” he said yesterday.
Outa laid charges against Koko, accusing him of having assisted the Guptas to buy Optimum Coal Holdings which was owned by Glencore.
In its affidavit to the police, Outa chief operating officer Ben Theron gave the police supporting evidence in a form of “Guptaleaks” e-mails claiming that Koko had, prior to securing that deal, flown to Dubai – a trip allegedly paid for by the Guptas.
Koko is accused of using his position at Eskom to help the Guptas to buy Optimum Coal Holdings and its Optimum and Koornfontein coal mines from Glencore, by helping put those businesses under financial pressure to force the sale to the Guptas and helping fund the Guptas’ purchase.
Theron said Optimum had a coal supply agreement with Eskom and had been involved in a dispute with the power utility for some years over the quality of the coal supplied and the contract which forced Glencore to sell its coal to Eskom at a huge loss.
He said Eskom fined Optimum R2.177 billion in penalties and, in July 2015, made a legal demand for full payment.
“By this time, the Guptas had already made an anonymous offer to buy Optimum but were rejected…“On December 10, 2015, Glencore, OCH and the business rescue practitioners signed an agreement to sell the OCH mines and assets to the Gupta businesses Oakbay Investments and Tegeta Exploration & Resources for R2.15bn; this deal had to be paid for and finalised by March 30, 2016.
“In December 2015, Tegeta e-mailed Koko referring to the need for a prepayment confirmation, asking him ‘to kindly send us a written confirmation regarding the payment for supply of coal amounting to R1 680 000 000…’ detailing the agreed terms and conditions”.
“During December, Koko engineered a coal ‘emergency’ by manipulating the coal supply situation, removing Just Coal as one of its suppliers. Using emergency procurement procedures, Eskom signed new coal supply agreements with Tegeta and, between January 29 and April 26, 2016, paid Tegeta R1.2bn on these contracts including prepayments; a large part of this was used to fund Tegeta’s purchase of Optimum,” Theron said.