DBSA says Eskom has ‘no understanding of governance’
Publish date: 17 August 2017
Issue Number: 575
Diary: Legalbrief Forensic
Category: Corruption
During three weeks of negotiations with Eskom, it became clear that it had no understanding of governance or why it is in such a mess. Business Day reports that this is according to the chair of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, Jabu Moleketi, who said: ‘We were making our views quite clear. We felt it was important for Eskom to understand the implications of a qualified audit. Eskom didn't seem to understand why it couldn't just scrap the requirement for a clean audit. We thought there was no appreciation on their side of the seriousness of the matter.’ The report says the bank triggered a clean-audit clause in its debt agreement with Eskom after the auditor-general gave its financial statements for the year ended March the thumbs down, not least because of a missing R3bn in unauthorised expenditure. The bank demanded that Eskom's financial director, the Gupta-associated Anoj Singh, be removed immediately or it would call in a R15bn loan. This would have triggered the instant recall of some R351bn worth of loans from its other creditors, including major local banks.