Firms should ‘repay ill-gotten gains’

Parliament should lead a campaign to shame big firms that colluded in the state capture scandal and get back money siphoned off from the parastatals, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said yesterday.

“Civil cases take a long time. What about moral suasion?” he asked during a briefing to parliament’s portfolio committee on public enterprises on progress in rehabilitating companies left in financial dire straits by corruption.

He said executives from firms that were complicit in irregular deals or cover-ups through unscrupulous auditing had conveyed to him their “excruciating” senti- ments about what had transpired.

“Well, excruciating is one thing, paying back the money lost to South Africa is another,” the minister said.

He suggested the legislature was well-placed to call on the entities involved to “pay back the money”.

Gordhan noted that international consultancy McKinsey had refunded R902 million paid to it by Eskom without a proper contract. But there had been no progress in recuperating large sums paid by the power utility to its local development partners, the Gupta-related Regiments Capital and Trillian.

He said as government implemented corrective measures at state-owned entities, more irregular spending was coming to light that was not reflected in auditing processes for years, raising questions about the conduct of auditors at the time the state capture phenomenon was in full swing. “Why have they not been reporting some of the things we see today?”

He noted that Eskom’s irregular expenditure had jumped from R3 billion to R19.6 billion in the last financial year and that it was not the only state-owned company where irregularities have surfaced under new boards. – ANA