Brian Molefe gets ‘very irregular’ R30m ‘pension payout’ – report

The Sunday Times has reported that even though Brian Molefe only managed 18 months as power utility Eskom’s CEO, he still allegedly received a “golden handshake” of R30 million this year.

Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown told the paper she knew nothing about the payment, but added that she didn’t deal with “operational issues” at the parastatal.

The paper explains that it saw documents detailing the alleged payment being made on March 23, which named it variously as “severance” pay and an “Eskom pension fund” payment.

According to a labour expert, who expressed concerns about the use of taxpayer money in what looked like a “mutual settlement agreement”, the amount appeared “very irregular”.

If the payment was severance, it should only have been no more than R15 million, and for it to be a pension payout, Molefe would have needed to be on a gross annual salary of R243 million a year. He actually only earned R8 million a year.

Molefe resigned in tears last year after having been implicated in the then public protector Thuli Madonsela’s State of Capture report. He had allegedly arranged sweetheart Eskom deals for companies owned by the Gupta family and had exchanged no fewer than 58 telephone calls with Atul Gupta. He was also placed at the family’s Saxonwold home on several occasions through his phone records.

He invited nationwide scorn by suggesting at a press conference that he had somehow not been visiting the family by saying “there’s a shebeen in that area”. Bizarrely, he successfully elicited an apology from the Sunday Times after the paper reported he had claimed to have visited an actual shebeen in Saxonwold, which technically he had never admitted to. There are no shebeens in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.

Molefe told the Sunday Times this week he had been paid “what was due to me”, but did not confirm the amount.

Eskom’s spokesperson said that only the board would be able to answer questions of how much it had decided to pay the former CEO. He said the amount would have to reflect in the annual report later.

The board’s spokesman said the only payments made to Molefe were those due to him, but the public would only be privy to those details once their report was published in June.