Documents show alleged interference in $2.2bn deal

During a mysterious meeting at OR Tambo Airport in September 2007, an executive of global engineering firm Hitachi urged the chairperson of the ANC’s investment firm Chancellor House to help sway power utility Eskom away from its plans to award two major contracts to its rival bidder, French company Alstom. The discussion between Chancellor House chairman Professor Taole Mokoena and Klaus-Dieter Rennert, then a senior executive at Hitachi Power Europe, was brief, according to internal Hitachi emails obtained by News24. Rennert made it clear that Hitachi wanted the contract. While the involvement of ANC funding front Chancellor House in the Hitachi deal has been known for years, all role players have consistently denied in public that there was any political influence brought to bear on Eskom. These denials were false, News24 reports.

Rennert asked Mokoena to speak with his ‘connections’ at Eskom and in politics to warn them of the risk of appointing a single supplier to construct both the boilers and turbines at Medupi Power Station. In return, Chancellor House and another black economic empowerment partner, Makotulo Investments, would be paid millions of rands in success fees for their work on lobbying and networking, and ultimately assisting Hitachi to clinch the deals – an arrangement that former Hitachi employees still deny was corrupt but simply the cost of doing business in SA. News24 notes that Chancellor House subsequently became Hitachi’s black empowerment partner in a joint venture, Hitachi Power Africa, and earned millions of rands which ultimately benefitted the ANC.