Business rescue expert spills beans on Eskom
He reported them to Hawks, who never responded
ESKOM has come under fire in Parliament over how it gave the Guptalinked firm Tegeta a prepayment of R586 million to allow it to buy Optimum coal mine.
Business rescue practitioner Piers Michael Marsden told the portfolio committee on public enterprises yesterday that the money should have gone to Optimum coal mine and not to Tegeta.
Marsden, who was testifying in the inquiry into state capture, also reported the transaction to the Hawks in July 2016, but so far they had not probed his suspicions.
A new investigating officer called him last week to meet with him on the case, and this was more than a year later.
Marsden also said it was unusual for Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane to travel to Switzerland to discuss the sale of Optimum to Tegeta.
Zwane met with Glencore’s owners in December 2015.
Marsden said it was also unusual to pay the money to Tegeta because it did not own the mine at the time, but was in the process of buying it.
Optimum was to be sold for R2.1 billion and Tegeta had had a shortfall of R600m.
Three days before the deadline for the purchase of the mine in April last year, three banks refused to give a loan to Tegeta, Marsden said.
However, on the same evening, there was a special Eskom board meeting where the transaction of R586m was approved to buy the mine.
Marsden said should not have gone to Tegeta, but to the mine, adding that Eskom was playing hardball to sell Optimum to any other party other than Tegeta.
“Throughout the transaction, we encountered an acrimonious relationship from Eskom. This could be ascribed to playing hardball. It was a particularly difficult transaction,” said Marsden, also arguing that the hard line taken by Eskom’s senior executives in the sale of the mine was surprising.
Former finance minister Pravin Gordhan said the evi- dence leader, advocate Ntuthuzelo Vanara, must bring more important witnesses like Marsden, who would shed light on state capture.
He said there was a direct link to the appointment of people at Eskom and other SOEs to what has been happening.
Meanwhile, Parliament’s mineral resources portfolio committee again put on the back-burner its decision on the nature of the inquiry to be undertaken into allegations made against Zwane.
The committee yesterday received a legal opinion from the parliamentary legal unit, which advised that it has an option to decide on a general oversight or a statutory inquiry.
Zwane was a stone’s throw away from the meeting, attending a “cabinet and other crucial meetings in Cape Town”, after tendering an apology.
He has been given until tomorrow to furnish dates for consideration for scheduled committee meetings.
Briefing the portfolio committee, legal adviser Frank Jenkins said the committee had a mandate to play oversight and scrutinise the executive.
“It is important to realise that the committee decides how to do it,” Jenkins said.
He informed the committee about general oversight and statutory inquiries, with the latter providing for Parliament to make a finding, and necessitating the president to act without discretion.
“In my view, in the case of the minister of mineral resources it is a general oversight function, unless Parliament is driving towards a bigger process that is also set in the constitution to remove the cabinet as a whole,” he said.
“There is no finding made in this instance. There is a general oversight responsibility that’s resting on Parliament.”
Jenkins said witnesses were summonsed as a last resort, and that failure to appear before the committee was a criminal offence.
He also said witnesses could not hide behind the sub judice rule when asked questions.
Zwane ducked some questions at the last meeting, claiming they were sub judice. “It does not mean when there is a court case the committee’s hands are tied. The committee can proceed…”
R586m should never have been paid to Tegeta