JOHANNESBURG - The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has
laid criminal charges against suspended Eskom executive Matshela Koko regarding
a series of irregularities, corruption and fraud.
Outa Chief Operating
Officer, Ben Theron said that “We have built a solid case against Koko with
evidence of misconduct in his role as an Eskom executive and his relationship
with the Guptas”.
In December 2016, Koko was
appointed as Interim CEO of Eskom and was suspended in May 2017.Koko has
been an Eskom executive since 2014 and, since October 2015, the executive in
charge of generation which includes oversight of coal contracts.
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.
Optimum had a coal supply
agreement with Eskom and had been involved in a dispute with Eskom 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.
Eskom fined Optimum R2.177
billion in penalties and, in July 2015, made legal demand for full payment. By
this time, the Guptas had already made an anonymous offer to buy Optimum but
were rejected. The demand for the penalties payment was apparently the last
straw financially for Optimum, which went into business rescue on 4 August
2015.
On 10 December 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 R2.15 billion; this deal had to be paid for and
finalised by 30 March 2016.
In December 2015, Tegeta
emailed 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 29 January and 26 April
2016, paid Tegeta R1.2 billion on these contracts including prepayments; a
large part of this was used to fund Tegeta’s purchase of Optimum.
This was particularly useful
to Tegeta when it failed to meet the initial March 2016 payment deadline and
needed funds for the shortfall in April. Eskom also provided a R1.6 billion
guarantee to Tegeta to help its funding situation.
In January 2016, Koko took
a trip to Dubai
where he stayed in the Oberoi Hotel, all at the Guptas’ expense, underlining
his close links to the family.
Read also:
Throughout the Optimum
financial collapse and subsequent sale, Eskom had insisted that the R2.177
billion penalty would not be waived for Glencore or any new owner. But in July
2017 at a media briefing Eskom publicly confirmed that the fine had been
reduced to R577 million, saying the coal quality readings on which it had based
the penalties were wrong. At the same briefing Eskom also confirmed the R1.6
billion guarantee to Tegeta, which it had previously denied.
In May 2017, Koko was
placed on special leave pending an investigation when it was revealed that a
company at which his stepdaughter was a director at netted at least R1 billion
in contracts from Eskom in just 11 months.
Over recent weeks, Outa has
laid similar charges against others over state capture
allegations, including Eskom former and serving executives.
-BUSINESS
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