Eskom

Eskom parliamentary inquiry told of “missing” money and coal

The Eskom parliamentary inquiry has been revealing even more dirt on the now infamous power company. From state capture to missing trillions.

Eskom

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse’s (OUTA) Ted Blom has said that Eskom has a “history” of kickbacks. As the parliamentary inquiry into the power utility began on Tuesday, Blom stated that R1 trillion and about seven rugby fields of coal “have gone missing”.

Blom claims that since the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) came into existence, Eskom has not re-negotiated its tenders on an open tender system, therefore being in breach of the act.

The issue with tenders “runs deep,” with Blom claiming that there are over 1000 cases of alleged tender corruption that still have not been brought before the parliamentary inquiry.

Blom’s report also revealed that Eskom is paying four times more for coal than it should be. Here’s the real gem: 400 000 tonnes of paid for coal has now disappeared and is “missing”. Eskom’s assets were also increased from R200-million to R700-million in just a few years, even though no new projects were completed.

“The extent of the inefficiency is mind-boggling. Even if you privatised Eskom today, you would only make R200-billion.”

Blom also told the inquiry that Eskom borrowed a whopping R480-billion from government in order to pay for just R93-billion worth of assets. Why does Blom believe this massive overvaluing took place? Well, a little matter of Eskom guaranteeing itself profits even if it doesn’t provide the energy. The evidence for this was the National Energy Regulator of South Africa’s ability to drop the price of energy by 10%, even though it had spent so much time qualifying its amount.

As The Mail & Guardian puts it, things only seem to get worse…

“To make matters worse, Eskom is also running at a R27-billion loss to date. Blom has said that the debt is due to Eskom giving the Gupta-owned company Trillian its derivatives to “play with”.

In total, more than a trillion has moved through Eskom’s treasury, Blom said. The government has sold shares in Vodacom to bailout Eskom and the government has loaned the parastatal R60-billion. Blom said Eskom won’t be able to pay back the money it has borrowed.”

Blom concluded by explaining that even though Eskom has denied any wrongdoing, a crime report has implicated around 50 people in Eskom’s “capturing”.

The OUTA man has encouraged parliament to initiate amnesty in order to encourage more whistle-blowers to come forward.