Parliament - Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown on Wednesday said she was expecting the Eskom board to report back to her this week on a forensic investigation into the awarding of contracts worth around R1 billion to the stepdaughter of the utility’s acting chief executive Matshela Koko.
“At the moment the board has approved Cliffe Dekker [Hofmeyer] to investigate the allegations that have been in the public space around Mr Koko and I await the board’s presentation to me, which should be by the end of this week,” Brown told the National Assembly where she was replying to MPs’ questions.
Earlier on, Brown sidestepped questions on whether Koko should be suspended while the probe into allegations that a conflict of interest arose when eight contracts worth a billion rand were awarded to Impulse International in which his stepdaughter Koketso Choma is a shareholder. At the time, the division which awarded the contracts was headed by Koko.
He claimed he did not know Choma was a director of the company, despite the two living in the same house. Koko said when he became aware of her involvement, he had asked her to resign.
The Eskom board later announced it had commissioned a probe to “ascertain whether the allegations can be corroborated and/or substantiated by evidence including real and/or documentary evidence”.