“Let me put it blatantly, Eskom is lying”

Treasury’s chief procurement officer Kenneth Brown has said that Eskom is lying about cooperating with Treasury in its probe of coal contracts involving the Guptas.

Speaking on eNCA, Brown said: “It’s a pity that one state institution must talk about the other state institution like this. Let me put it blatantly, Eskom is lying.”

On Sunday, Eskom said it has cooperated with the reviews of its coal contracts.

On Monday, Treasury hit back, saying Eskom resisted efforts by it to review the power utility’s coal contracts.

“To date, not only has Eskom failed to honour its undertaking to submit comments to Treasury’s report, but it chose to ignore correspondence and put all forms of hindrances,” said Treasury.

Eskom retorted on Monday, saying it was “shocked and perplexed” by Treasury’s comments.

“National Treasury started an investigation into Eskom contracts with Tegeta in July 2015. Eskom wants to reiterate that it has been cooperating with National Treasury. Since then… Eskom has been responding to National Treasury requests,” said Eskom.

Tegeta’s major shareholders include the Gupta family’s Oakbay Investments, Duduzane Zuma’s Mabengela Investments, and Gupta associate Salim Essa’s company Elgasolve.

Brown said they have evidence that Eskom did not fully cooperate with Treasury in its investigation of the coal contracts.

“We can release letters they have written to us asking for extensions. We have written letters to them where we have said we want certain information.”

“So we have not received much of the information that we wanted from Eskom to conclude the work that we’re busy with here.”

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