The Eskom board yesterday announced it had instituted a forensic and legal investigation into how a contractor – the stepdaughter of its acting chief executive, Matshela Koko – won contracts valued at more than a billion rand.
The investigation comes in the wake of a Sunday Times weekend report alleging the Eskom contractor had raked in over R1 billion in contracts, revealing she was Koko’s stepdaughter, Koketso Choma.
Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown this week instructed the Eskom board to institute an investigation into the allegations and report back to her in 90 days. However, media reports yesterday said this had been reviewed to just one month.
The decision was made in a meeting of the board on Tuesday, Eskom said yesterday.
“The allegations… have a corrosive impact on the social standing of Eskom, as a brand, as well as its entire leadership. As the board, we have a constitutional mandate to probe these allegations, with a view to getting to the unassailable truth of the situation,” said board chairperson Dr Ben Ngubane in a statement.
Law firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr has been appointed to conduct a forensic and legal investigation “in respect of the various articles concerning the potential conflict of interest”.
“The objective of the investigation will be to ascertain whether the allegations can be corroborated and/or substantiated by evidence, including real and/or documentary evidence,” added Ngubane.
Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr would appoint an independent auditing firm to assist with the forensic investigation, Eskom said in the statement.
“This process will facilitate a fitting response to our shareholder representative (Public Enterprises Minister) Lynne Brown, who has asked the board to address the matter as swiftly as possible,” Ngubane said.
“Instead, we decided to leave it to Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr to craft it so as to facilitate, inter alia, effective scope consideration owing to their expertise. We will not hesitate to implement the resultant recommendations.”
The board “will always endeavour to act decisively in the best interests of the nation, in the face of various challenges they confront”, Ngubane added.
Koko this week denied the allegations, saying he was not aware of his daughter’s involvement in the company Impulse International, of which, at the time of the awarding of the contracts, she was a director.
Eskom said Impulse International had been awarded nine contracts by the parastatal since 2014. They amounted to about R350 million.
These excluded the amount of subcontracts the company had benefited from.
Eskom spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe this week told The Star that Koko had not been aware of Impulse International getting contracts from the public entity.
Phasiwe said it was only in August that Koko became aware of his stepdaughter’s involvement in Impulse International.
@Sihle_MG