- Speaking at News24’s On the Record summit in Sandton, Johannesburg yesterday, the head of the NPA’s Investigating Directorate, advocate Andrea Johnson said the NPA was on track to fulfil its promise to place nine high-profile state capture cases on the court roll by September.
- One of the cases is the corruption, fraud and money laundering matter involving R549.6 million allegedly defrauded from Eskom in a contract issued to Impulse International involving it’s former acting CEO Matshela Koko and his stepdaughter, Koketso Choma.
Johnson said the organisation was pursuing “strategic, impactful prosecutions” and not going after low-hanging fruit.
Koko was accused of promising ABB R6.5bn in future contracts if it sub-contracted work on Kusile to Impulse International, a company partially owned by his stepdaughter, Koketso Choma.
ABB was reportedly awarded a R2.2bn control and instrumentation contract for Kusile in 2015, and subcontracted some of the work to Impulse. This was despite the fact that Impulse twice failed ABB’s tests for sub-contractor appointments and did not qualify to do the work.
Documents in the Eskom Files – a vast data dump of emails, forensic reports, bank statements and legal and financial records – show that ABB paid Impulse R557m. After Choma became a shareholder at Impulse, Eskom awarded the company a series of other lucrative contracts and paid the firm R295 million.
In July two former employees of ABB, as well as their spouses, were arrested for corruption linked to Eskom contracts involving R2.2 billion. Read more
During December 2020 ABB South Africa agreed to pay Eskom R1.577 billion of funds it had been irregularly paid after it voluntarily disclosed collusion with certain Eskom officials to irregularly award it R2.2 billion for a control and instrumentation contract for Kusile Power Station in 2015. Read more
Koko has consistently denied involvement in ABB’s awarding of sub-contracts to Impulse.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
