Having survived wrongful allegations of racism, Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter has now resorted to legal action against his own board, in his fight to clean up Eskom and rid it of the systemic corruption that has plagued it ever since ANC took over in 1994.
Andre de Ruyter is fighting in court to scrap a massive corrupt tender with a BBBEE company called Econ Oil, a contract which was approved by all seven members of the current Eskom board, including current chairman Malegapuru Makgoba.
The new tender was issued to Econ Oil in October 2019 for the supply of oil to Eskom and De Ruyter only became Eskom CEO in January 2020. However all seven members of the current board, including the chairman, Prof Makgoba, were already board members by then and approved the deal with Econ Oil. The Board members were Malegapuru Makgoba (Chairman), Calib Cassim (Chief Financial Officer), Pulane Molokwane, Banothile Makhubela, Rod Crompton, Busisiwe Mavuso and Tshepo Mongalo.
De Ruyter is saying in court papers that the deal was corrupt and inflated and when the Eskom board approved the Econ deal in October 2019, it was already known to the Eskom board that a corrupt relationship existed between Econ Oil, and a senior Eskom employee called Thandi Marah.
This corrupt relationship was known because of a report by law firm Bowmans which was commissioned to investigate irregularities at Eskom. The contract with Bowmans was however suspended by the Eskom board and the Bowmans report was shelved to be silenced and gather dust.
This then paved the way for the current corrupt tender with Econ Oil to be approved by the Eskom board in October 2019.
However, when De Ruyter became Eskom CEO, the Bowmans mandate to investigate irregularities was renewed and unsurprisingly the Bowmans’ investigation led to their own findings from May and October 2019. It is on the grounds of these Bowmans reports that De Ruyter wants the court to annul the tender with Econ Oil.