‘Hawks must act on state capture’

MPs exhort law enforcement agencies to get moving and provide quarterly reports to Parliament

MPS have called on the Hawks and other law enforcement agencies to act on state capture and give quarterly reports in Parliament on their work.

This was after the Parliamentary inquiry into Eskom yesterday approved the report, which has implicated several individuals, including the Guptas.

The report has also made findings that there was the flouting of the Public Finance Management Act and other laws in the awarding of contracts to the Guptas.

Former Eskom board members and executives have been singled out to have contributed to the state of affairs at Eskom.

Evidence illustrated the extent to which public procurement processes at Eskom had been used to serve individuals

The report also blasted former ministers of public enterprises Malusi Gigaba and Lynne Brown for failing to act on what was going on at the power utility.

Former Eskom officials Brian Molefe, Matshela Koko, Anoj Singh and other officials were involved in some of the matters.

The report accuses some of the officials and former board members of providing conflicting statements to the inquiry.

“The committee finds that there was a corrupt relationship between the Gupta family, their associates and key state functionaries, various gratifications were provided and accepted in order to influence Eskom board members and employees to act unlawfully and to induce Eskom to enter into a number of business contracts,” states the report.

It also found that Salim Essa, the Guptas and Duduzane Zuma had influence on the decisions taken by Eskom.

The portfolio committee on public enterprises found there was extensive corruption at Eskom, which caused it to lose billions of rand.

Eskom reported recently that incurred irregular expenditure R18 billion.

McKinsey has said it would pay back R1bn that was wrongly paid to it by Eskom.

The consultancy firm has paid the interest of R100m recently and it will pay another R905m.

Trillian had not paid back the R500m to Eskom.

“The committee heard evidence which illustrated the extent to which public procurement processes at Eskom and the exercise of public power had been used to serve the interests of private businesses and individuals.

“The abuse of public resources to benefit these private interests stands in direct contradiction to Eskom’s constitutional obligation to ensure it of that its procurement processes are equitable, transparent, fair, competitive and cost-effective,” the report found.

It added that the Eskom boards had failed to act on the wrong things at the entity.

The inquiry also found that some of the money was funnelled out of South Africa to companies in Dubai and Hong Kong.

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) welcomes Parliament’s Public

Enterprise report on Eskomwhich implicates previous ministers Lynn Brown, Malusi Gigaba and others. Their recommendations to hand this report over to the Zondo Commission will further substantiate OUTA’s submission on the power utility to the State Capture inquiry.