The Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) has welcomed the Western Cape High Court judgement against Pretoria based firm, Toto investments Holdings in which it applied to interdict the implementation of partnering with South African Airways (SAA).
The Western Cape High Court has dismissed with costs an application by Pretoria-based firm, Toto Investment Holdings, to halt the sale of shares of South African Airways (SAA) to Takatso Consortium.
Toto had approached the court in a bid to force Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan and the department of public enterprises (DPE) to make records of the sale public and to also interdict the sale of the shares.
While Judge Nathan Erasmus on Monday gave the department 20 days to submit the confidential documents to the court, he dismissed Toto’s application to halt the sale of the shares.
The judge ordered that the main review application be placed under judicial case management until the matter is heard in January 2023.
The DPE welcomed the judgment.
“We welcome the judgment as we have stated in our affidavit that the transaction is governed by confidentially undertakings and the Department was not at liberty to disclose to third parties’ certain documents related to the transaction unless under a confidentiality regime. It is unfortunate that Toto had to press ahead with this ill-fated strategy after we discussed with them at length about the confidentiality nature of the transaction,” said the department.
The department said it would comply with the court directive to provide non-confidential version of record of the transaction and the confidential version of the record within the 20 days stipulated in the court order.
“This means that confidential information related to the transaction cannot be disclosed for public consumption and only non-confidential records may be shared with the public.
“It is interesting to note that certain political parties want to intervene in this matter with nefarious intentions. It is clear that this is a political agenda which is intended to set back and disrupt the reforms of SOES. This will facilitate further corruption,” said the department.
The department also stated that it remained committed to ensuring that this transaction would be implemented as soon as possible.
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