Transnet findings ‘crucial for recovery of funds’

Michael Marchant of Open Secrets says the release of the second instalment of the Zondo commission’s report – and specifically its findings in relation to Transnet – represents a vital step towards holding responsible those at whose hands state capture took place.

Open Secrets is a nonprofit investigative organisation. The second part of the commission’s report was released on Tuesday evening and detailed how Transnet became the “primary site of state capture”, with the evidence apportioning almost 72% of all the tainted government contracts to the freight and logistics parastatal.

Marchant said on Wednesday that against this backdrop, the report was going to be “absolutely crucial” in recovering looted funds as well as holding to account those implicated.

The people implicated in the Transnet capture “are the same ones who were later implicated in the capture of other big entities, characters like [former Transnet and Eskom chief executive] Brian Molefe”, Marchant said, Several high-profile politicians and businessmen are implicated in the report, with Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, chair of the commission, recommending scores of them to potentially face criminal charges of, among others, racketeering.

ALSO READ: State capture report: Anoj Singh, Gupta cash and the safety deposit box

Marchant yesterday welcomed the recommendation. “It makes complete sense,” he said. “If you listened to the evidence of Shadow World’s [investigative agency] Paul Holden, it showed that is exactly what this
is. The Gupta family and its related companies are the very definition of a racketeering enterprise and attempted to extract funds in a very systemic, networked way”.

The “primary architects and implementers of state capture at Transnet”, Zondo found, were Molefe, former chief financial officer Anoj Singh and Siyabonga Gama, a former chief executive. Former minister of public enterprises Malusi Gigaba also found himself in the firing line, with Zondo finding he helped install all three.

Zondo recommended potential criminal prosecutions of Gigaba, Molefe, Singh and Gama for a variety of offences relating to a variety of allegations – including corruption and racketeering over cash bribes they have been accused of picking up from the Guptas’ Saxonwold compound during the state capture years.

Gigaba, Molefe, Singh and Gama have denied the allegations at the commission, but Zondo in his report found the evidence around the alleged bribes, together with the broader evidence of wrongdoing, constituted grounds for further investigations.

ALSO READ: Anoj Singh sat in Eskom meetings while still at Transnet, Zondo hears

Gigaba has since taken to Twitter and slammed Zondo’s findings, saying: “3 years and R1 billion later, DCJ Raymond Zondo has found NO evidence to warrant a recommendation that I be charged with corruption. Instead of clearing me, he asks that I be investigated some more in the hope that this will kill me, politically. If only he and his handlers knew!”

Molefe, meanwhile, was quoted by IOL, as saying numerous probes into his conduct had put his life “on hold for five years now” and that “it looks like it will be like that for the next 10 years judging by Justice Zondo’s recommendations”.