Johannesburg – Former Eskom head of legal and compliance Suzanne Daniels has blamed the power utility’s former head of generation, Matshela Koko, and chief financial officer Anot Singh for having played a critical role in assisting Tegeta, owned by Oakbay, to purchase Optimum Coal Mine for R1.68 billion.
Daniels was testifying before the commission of inquiry into State Capture on Monday about the events which led to the purchase of Optimum Coal Mine between 2015 and 2016.
In her testimony, she told the commission she took up employment with the power utility on October 1, 2015 as company secretary.
However, according to evidence before the commission, Oakbay and Tegeta did not have money to purchase Optimum Coal Mine, which was Eskom’s main supplier for coal.
Detailing a version of the dubious events, evidence leader advocate Pule Seleka, during Daniels’ testimony, told the commission how the deal was hatched, saying Optimum was under business rescue.
During that process, Eskom officials, including Daniels, set up a memorandum in which the power utility was going to pre-purchase coal from Optimum for a period of 12 months at a cost of R1.6 billion.
According to the heading of the memorandum, the prepayment of R1.6bn was initially to be paid to Optimum but ended up with the Gupta-owned Tegeta Mine.
Seleka said Tegeta used the R1.6bn as guarantee to the business rescue practitioners that they have the financial muscle to purchase Optimum Coal Holdings.
This was confirmed by Daniels in her testimony but blamed it all on Koko and Singh.
According to her, both Koko and Singh were the authors of the memorandum. She denied former Eskom board chairperson Dr Ben Ngubane’s version that she initiated the Eskom’s board meeting including drafting the memorandum.
“I received a call from Dr Ngubane who said I must organise a board meeting for the drafting of the memorandum. He said I would get all the information from the executives (Koko and Singh).
’’I acted on Dr Ngubane’s instruction. I drafted two versions of the memorandum. On each version, I handed them to the executives who made the changes.
“They made changes to the final version which allowed Eskom to purchase coal from Tegeta,” Daniels said.
Daniels’ testimony continues.
Political Bureau