Former Eskom chief financial officer Anoj Singh was accused of lying about who paid for his travels to Dubai as he testified before the parliamentary inquiry into the power utility on Tuesday.
Singh, who resigned on the eve of his appearance, was questioned by Advocate Ntuthuzelo Vanara for less than an hour when the evidence leader confronted him with proof that a flight to Dubai in 2017 and a hotel stay years earlier were both funded by Sahara Computers, which belongs to the Gupta brothers at the centre of an alleged web of state capture.
Singh had insisted that "the Gupta family did not pay for any of my travels". Instead, he said the cost was covered by a mutual acquaintance who invited him to the United Arab Emirates.
After confronting Singh with the paid invoice, Vanara asked whether the acquaintance had any link with Sahara Computers.
Singh conceded: "Not that I know."
He said he had no personal relationship with the Gupta family although he had met the brothers and may have crossed paths with them when they stayed at the same hotel in Dubai.
Vanara then turned to the negotiating of a coal contract with the Gupta family's Tegeta Exploration and how it came about that a penalty imposed on the Optimum coal mine it had acquired was slashed.
He confronted Singh with a note from former Oakbay board member Mark Parmensky demanding that the R2.1 billion penalty imposed by the utility on Glencore, the previous owner of the mine, be made to "go away".
Singh said he had left the arbitration process that saw the fine reduced to less than half a billion rand in the hands of former Eskom head of legal Suzanne Daniels, but had signed off on it because she was not comfortable doing both.
"Ms Daniels was responsible for negotiations at the time. Ms Daniels believed that given the fact that she was negotiating the contracted it would not be appropriate for her to sign it."
The inquiry was sparked in part by former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's 2015 report in which she found that Eskom appeared to have gone out of its way to ensure that Tegeta obtained the Optimum mine and a lucrative coal supply contract.
- African News Agency (ANA)
