Cape Town - An additional eight liquidation applications against Filcon Projects, the company at the centre of a row between the DA and ANC in the province over alleged corrupt tenders, have emerged.
The ANC had said these new applications indicated the company was in financial trouble since at least 2010 and should never have been awarded City of Cape Town and Western Cape provincial government tenders.
The liquidation applications, which were reported by the Weekend Argus, could not be confirmed by the Cape Times on Sunday.
The ANC had alleged that the DA-led provincial government and city had awarded multimillion-rand construction contracts to bankrupt company Filcon which had recently applied for business rescue.
Both had rubbished claims by the ANC that corrupt tenders were awarded, denied they had knowledge of Filcon’s financial woes and attributed the allegations to an attempt to discredit the DA ahead of Wednesday’s elections.
Cameron Dugmore, the ANC’s third candidate on its provincial list, said these applications should have emerged during due diligence ahead of the company being awarded tenders.
He said it was worrying that the DA had brushed off Filcon’s problems as a “reputable contractor running into cash-flow problems”.
“That is quite worrying. If there had been due diligence there would not have been tenders awarded of such a large amount.”
Dugmore said the ANC would write to the public protector and the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to ask for an investigation.
Transport and Public Works MEC Robin Carlisle said he was “certain” the liquidation applications would have emerged during checks prior to the tender being awarded.
“We have carried out all the checks that we are required to carry out. On that basis, Filcon was included in a tender. On adjudication, Filcon won that particular tender.”
He said it was “very unfortunate” Filcon had applied for business rescue.
“When you run as many contracts as we do, these things sometimes happen. Filcon is not the first contractor that has got itself into trouble. It is, I think, the second we have had in five years.”
Carlisle said this was an example of a news story being made out of something that was not a story.
“We are satisfied there has been no wrongdoing. We would welcome the SIU to investigate. We would welcome the public protector to investigate.”
Filcon managing director Saul Loggenberg told the Cape Times he had no comment in addition to that he had made to the Weekend Argus.
He told the newspaper he had not been involved with the company in 2010 and applications had been settled in 2012 and last year.
Cape Times