Former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter.
Parliament will meet with the Eskom board on allegations that were made by the former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter regarding corruption, theft, maladministration, sabotage, lack of consequence management, cartels, and other financial irregularities at the power utility.
Members of Parliament lambasted South Africa’s law-enforcement agencies for their lax approach in investigating allegations of fraud and corruption at Eskom.
The Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) was briefed by the South African Police Service (SAPS), the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks) and the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) on allegations that were made by De Ruyter.
De Ruyter made headlines in February following a TV interview in which he claimed that at least R1 billion a month was being syphoned off from Eskom through a number of cartels with inside help.
The former CEO said senior politicians were directly involved with and entrenched in corruption at Eskom, and went further to accuse the ruling ANC of using Eskom as a “feeding trough”.
However, two weeks’ ago De Ruyter gave MPs a slip and refused to answer on who the senior politicians or politicians were who were allegedly involved in corruption at Eskom.
Police commissioner Fannie Masemola and Hawks’ head Godfrey Lebeya said they were not aware of any politicians that were under investigation for allegations of corruption at Eskom.
Masemola said that De Ruyter never reported the alleged involvement of a politician in Eskom corruption during their meetings with him.
“Currently, myself, I’m not aware. There is no senior politician that (de Ruyter) reported to me. The Hawks did not report the politician to me either,” Masemola said.
“I'm not brushing aside what Mr de Ruyter has said. I have established a team, we didn't sit back. We formed a multi-disciplinary team, we are doing something.
"What we found was that the organised crime part of Eskom, in most instances, was already open with the Hawks. The team established an office at Megawatt Park. That's how serious I took the matter.”
However, MPs were not happy with the fact that Masemola had known for a year about De Ruyter’s allegations and there were yet no arrests that have been made so far.
Lebeya said attempts to meet with De Ruyter after his interview did not materialise as De Ruyter referred all requests for further engagement to his lawyers.
He said they would need to refer the matter to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to decide on whether or not de Ruyter satisfied Section 34 of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act, which compelled him to report corruption to relevant authorities as soon as he became aware.
MPs also asked about the intelligence-driven report following a clandestine investigation that De Ruyter had sanctioned at Eskom with R50 million funds raises from private donors.
The report, which was partly funded by Business Leadership South Africa, has been slammed as a “fishing expedition” that relied on hearsay and compiled by people with certain political objectives.
SIU head Advocate Andy Mothibi said they only became aware of the private intelligence report into allegations of rampant corruption and maladministration at Eskom on the morning of de Ruyter's appearance before Scopa.
Mothibi said the SIU has not seen the Eskom Intelligence report as Eskom on Friday told them they were not in possession of the report after the SIU requested a copy of the report from Eskom officials.
“We need to know how was the private investigating company paid by Eskom? And if the investigation report was paid by third parties, then who are these parties,” he said.
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