DBSA says Eskom has ‘no understanding of governance’

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.