Nene’s name brandished in ‘fake’ letter to obtain loan for Guptas – report

The latest installment of #GuptaEmails demonstrates just how strategic the finance ministry was to the Guptas, and when the family could not get Nhlanhla Nene’s endorsement, they fabricated a letter.

As alleged by EFF leader Julius Malema during a press conference earlier this month, Transnet’s locomotive procurement appears to have been set in motion with the sole intention of facilitating kickbacks for the family.

Several media houses are reporting this morning that, according to the metadata on the email in question, Tedowodros Grebreslaise, a senior economic adviser with Regiments Capital, drafted the letter that purported to have the backing of Nene and addressed it to China Development Bank.

The letter, which was not signed, and addressed to the bank’s chairperson, Hu Huaibang, solicited a multibillion-rand loan to service Transnet’s locomotive procurement, which is now mired in controversy.

Business Day reports that in June 2015 during the World Economic Forum media conference, then Transnet acting CEO Siyabonga Gama announced that the “bank [China Development] agreed to provide Transnet with a R30-billion loan facility”.

Unsurprisingly, that is the exact amount paid to Chinese companies that won a large chunk of the tender – namely China South Rail and North China Rail.

At the EFF press conference, Malema emphasised that his party’s decision to write to the Chinese government to prosecute officials in that country implicated in financial impropriety was because “in China, if you are corrupt, they jail you. They don’t play around there”.

Malema also questioned the value added by “transactional advisers”, whom he accused of being nothing but corruption fixers, and it has now emerged that Regiments Capital fits that description.

It is believed the Guptas received as much as R5 billion in kickbacks from China South Rail. The sequence of events detailed in the email shows that the former Transnet former CFO, now in the same position at Eskom, Manoj Singh, passed on the letter to former Regiments director Eric Wood.

Nene was quoted as saying the letter was “clearly a fake/fabrication”, and questioned the role of finance ministry officials in working as go-betweens for the Guptas in their quest to capture state-owned entities.