Johannesburg - The state capture inquiry resumes on Monday morning with Eskom board chairman Jabu Mabuza continuing with his testimony.
Mabuza began giving testifying last week Friday and told the inquiry that when the new board took over in January 2018 Eskom was the theatre where state capture took place.
He said the power utility had millions in irregular expenditure.
The board chair also spoke about the charges that were laid against former Eskom executives that the company believed should be held accountable. Charges have been laid with the Hawks and civil claims will be laid regarding the controversial Gupta linked Tegeta coal deal.
Mabuza explained why certain members of the executive were charged through disciplinary hearings. He said Sean Maritz who served as the interim CEO and chief information officer had been charged with signing payment to a Chinese company days before the new Eskom CEO and the new board were to take over. January 2018.
Maritz also failed to disclose this information to the board. Days after the discovery, Maritz was charged and he decided to resign days before was to face a disciplinary hearing.
The second charges related to now-former executives Matshela Koko and Susan Daniels. The two faced the same charges of sharing confidential Eskom documents with an outside source through an email portal, [email protected]
Mabuza said the board suspects that the email portal belonged to Salim Essa, who is a Gupta linked businessman who has ties with Gupta owned Tegeta and Trillion Capital.
Koko sent numerous emails, over a period of months dating back to 2015, to that email portal according to the investigation by the Eskom board.
When asked about load-shedding, he said that when the new Eskom board took over there were various issues that needed to be dealt with such as the company’s financial woes and corruption, but load-shedding was not one of the issues. He said as such the board should have been able to foresee the disaster of unstable operational plants issues.
As part of the clean-up, Mabuza said the tender bidding committee, which oversaw the awarding of tenders, was dissolved as it wasn’t necessary.
The inquiry starts at 9 am.