Johannesburg - Fired PetroSA chairman Tshepo Kgadima wants his job back.
His lawyers have written to Central Energy Fund (CEF) chairwoman Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele, warning her not to make his replacement a permanent appointment.
Kgadima’s appointment was rescinded last month after allegations were made that he had swindled 250 investors through an investment scheme involving his company, LontohCoal.
According to his lawyers’ letter, seen by The Sunday Independent, Kgadima is to begin legal proceedings next month in a bid to be reinstated as chairman of PetroSA.
The businessman has also filed a R300 million defamation lawsuit against Times Media Limited, the owners of Business Day, which ran a series of stories detailing the allegations made against him by the former high commissioner to the UK, Zola Skweyiya.
Kgadima was thrown out when he stormed into Business Day’s offices to protest against its coverage.
He has enlisted the services of a top law firm, Phillip Silver Swartz Inc, which in June secured a R500 000 defamation settlement – said by lawyers to be the highest in South African legal history – for a boxing promoter from the suspended chief executive of Boxing SA.
Business Day editor Songezo Zibi said on Saturday the newspaper had not received any papers from Kgadima’s lawyers, but would defend its publication of the stories.
“We gave him numerous opportunities to reply before we published, but he never did. When he came to our offices, I had to tell him to leave because it was not clear what his complaint was,” said Zibi.
Skweyiya is among a number of people who allege Kgadima persuaded them to invest with him by claiming his company owned coal deposits in Zimbabwe and other mining assets that it did not possess.
The former envoy and minister wants Kgadima to repay him R3.6m he says he put into LontohCoal. He alleges Kgadima claimed the company would be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
In the letter to Mthembi-Mahanyele, lawyers say Kgadima learnt through the media about his appointment being revoked. The letter informing him of this “amounts to a repudiation of the agreement in terms of which, inter alia, our client was appointed as chairperson and director of PetroSA”, they say.
Attempts to geto comment on the development from PetroSA failed.
When contacted, Mthembi-Mahanyele’s spokesman, Mandla Tyala said he was on vacation.
However, Mthembi-Mahanyele said in a letter to The Sunday Independent this week that Kgadima had been given a chance to respond to Skweyiya’s allegations, but had failed to give “satisfactory” answers.
She also took PetroSA board members to task for rebelling against moves to verify their CVs in the wake of the Kgadima saga.
A number of board members are unhappy about the decision to vet them retrospectively. One of them, Brenda Madumise, has also said it is worrying that the decision to revoke Kgadima’s appointment was based on media reports.
“This is patently untrue,” Mthembi-Mahanyele wrote.
“We invited Mr Kgadima to give his side of the story in the face of serious allegations made against him by Ambassador Zola Skweyiya, who contacted us about the matter.
“When he could not give a satisfactory explanation, it was felt it would be difficult for him to carry out the duties of the PetroSA chairperson effectively.”
Mthembi-Mahanyele said board members would not have anything to worry about if they had nothing to hide. “Perhaps the term ‘vetting’ has evoked undue panic, but those directors who have been with CEF companies understand exactly what we are talking about.”
Sunday Independent