Johannesburg - Westinghouse Electric said senior employees at South Africa’s state power company volunteered information that prompted it to challenge the award of a 4.3 billion-rand contract to Areva SA.
Westinghouse applied for a High Court interdict on August 27 over a tender by Eskom for six replacement steam generators for the Koeberg plant, Africa’s only nuclear power station outside Cape Town.
The utility said on September 5 that it would sign a contract with France’s Areva.
The application was based primarily on inside information “from three different senior sources from within Eskom,” Westinghouse said in a statement late yesterday.
Eskom, which provides more than 95 percent of South Africa’s power, said it filed an affidavit on September 1 in which it dispelled “damning and serious” allegations raised by Westinghouse.
While the nuclear reactor arm of Toshiba withdrew its application for an interdict three days later, Westinghouse said the court granted its request to access the documents that informed Eskom’s decision to award Areva the contract.
Westinghouse said Eskom has failed to comply with the court order as it hasn’t provided the minutes of the board tender committee meeting and the record of a secret ballot.
Eskom said it wasn’t immediately able to comment in an e-mailed response to questions.
The allegations against Neo Lesela, a non-executive director of Eskom and chairwoman of its board tender committee, include altering the decision in favour of Areva, misleading the Minister of Public Enterprises and “making herself open to influence by Areva by attending nuclear training in Paris,” according to an e-mailed statement from Eskom yesterday.
The Eskom employees volunteered the information, according to Ruth Kolevsohn, a director at Johannesburg-based Burson- Marsteller, which issued the statement on behalf of Westinghouse. - Bloomberg News