Brian Molefe and other former Transnet executives issued with summons

The chairperson of the Transnet board Popo Molefe announced yesterday that former CEO Brian Molefe and former CFO Anoj Singh, along with other former top executives, has been issued with a summons.

The summons is an effort by the entity’s board to recover an estimated R1.3 billion allegedly looted during the former CEO (Brian Molefe) and CFO’s tenure.

Former Transnet chief executive Siyabonga Gama, who succeeded Molefe, is among those who have been summoned.

Gama was fired as group chief executive officer of Transnet last year after he failed to provide the board with reasons why he should not be fired. The parastatal said it had lost trust and confidence in his ability to lead it.

On September 27, 2018, Gama was given 10 days to submit written representations as to why he should not be fired, but Gama approached the Labour Court in Johannesburg to interdict the intention to dismiss him. The reasons supplied to Gama were alleged serious violations of his financial, procurement, and fiduciary duties.

Two law firms, Werksmans and MNS, implicated Gama in alleged breaches of procurement rules on a R54 billion contract to buy 1,064 new locomotives.

The Sowetan reports that R618 million of the R700 million advanced payment of the contract has been recovered by Transnet and that the entity’s acting CFO, Mohammed Mahomedy, is now working towards recovering the VAT that was paid.

Popo Molefe made the announcement about the summons during a presentation on Thursday on the board’s progress report on its efforts to stabilise the entity.

In May last year, Molefe, who had been acting in the position, was appointed as chairperson of the board at Transnet.

It was reported that during the presentation on Thursday, Molefe described what the new board found at the entity since its appointment as “nothing short of a horror movie”.

Molefe was quoted as saying that during Brian Molefe and Singh’s tenure, the staff at the entity went to the office primarily to loot, while he admitted that more employees were not aware of what was going on at the parastatal.

He said other employees had been appointed to positions only so they could loot the entity.

“All the good people who would not collaborate were [removed] from their positions. Assembled in this organisation was a team of professional thieves linked directly with state capture,” Molefe was quoted as saying.

Molefe said the board had encountered difficulty with obtaining information from the entity’s employees, forcing the board to obtain this information from the computer server.

EWN reports that Brian Molefe has said that the board’s chair’s public announcement was a failure to follow and that he was being treated unfairly.

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