Outa lays corruption charges against Eskom’s Anoj Singh

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has laid charges of corruption and financial misconduct against Eskom’s suspended chief financial officer, Anoj Singh.

The nonprofit civil action organisation said the charges were laid at Randburg Police Station on Monday.

“Anoj Singh has been invaluable for the Gupta empire, and has bent over backwards to pave the way for lucrative deals,” Outa’s chief operating officer, Ben Theron, said.

The charges against Singh come after Eskom admitted to Business Day on Monday that it had lied about payments of R1.6 billion to Gupta-linked financial advisory firm Trillian and global consultancy McKinsey.

Outa said an affidavit by its head of legal affairs, advocate Stefanie Fick, was handed to the police. The document outlines the case against the power utility’s CFO.

The case arises from an investigation by advocate Geoff Budlender, who was appointed by Trillian’s former chairperson Tokyo Sexwale to probe allegations of the firm’s use of inside political knowledge for commercial gain and links to the Guptas and their businesses.

Budlender’s report noted that Singh authorised at least four substantial payments totalling R419 million to Trillian between April and December 2016, which did not go through Eskom’s books.

The report was released on June 29 and is attached to Fick’s affidavit.

The payments to Trillian were connected to Trillian’s claim that it was a subcontractor to McKinsey and Company, which was an Eskom contractor, but there were neither tenders nor contracts supporting Eskom’s payments to Trillian, and no indication that Trillian did any work to justify the payments.

Fick said Budlender’s report and the leaked Gupta emails contained evidence of conduct by Singh that indicates corruption and breaches of the Public Finance Management Act and the Companies Act.

“It is also apparent from the Budlender report that there has to be a full-scale investigation into Eskom and Transnet.”

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