Following a Sunday Times article published last week alleging that a member or members of advisory group Trillian had pre-knowledge that President Jacob Zuma would replace former Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene with now Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Des van Rooyen, Tokyo Sexwale, independent nonexecutive chairperson of Trillian, says he has urgently interacted with members of senior management and viewed supporting documentation.

In a statement released by Trillian on Thursday, the company noted that verifiable evidence would need to be put forward.

“If this is true, it would be extremely alarming and would require a convincing explanation to the nation as to how that which was only supposed to be known by the President, became known in business circles, including Trillian,” Sexwale said.

He wanted to place on record that Trillian is not Gupta-owned, and that the share register of Trillian Holdings is available for public scrutiny.

“Although the alleged matters took place last year before I joined the company in April this year, I should initiate an independent investigation to fully test the veracity of these allegations,” he said.

Trillian says the independent investigation will be led by a trusted public person to fully investigate the allegations, in collaboration with South Africa’s law enforcement agencies.

Sexwale will make known the name of this independent person in the next 72 hours.

The Sunday Times article revealed that an unnamed former Trillian executive, now living in exile, became a whistleblower when she furnished recently departed Public Protector Thuli Madonsela with an affidavit related to her office's investigation into allegations of 'State capture', claiming that this pre-knowledge, of what became known as 'Nenegate', would, in turn, be to the firm's financial gain.

SPECULATION ABOUT TRILLIAN-ESKOM LINK

Meanwhile, State-owned power utility Eskom noted that, since the article was published on Sunday, it had been inundated with media queries about a contract it allegedly awarded to Trillian.
 
In a statement released on Thursday, Eskom categorically stated that it had no contracts in place with Trillian or associated companies.
 
“When the current board was appointed in December 2014, Eskom was facing challenges at both operational and financial levels. This period was plagued by capacity constraints, delays in the new build programme and the associated cost overruns, and load-shedding,” the statement says.
 
It further states that these challenges led to the board initiating an investigation into the reasons for the above issues and to it also devising a turnaround strategy for the organisation.

In June 2015, the board gave the mandate to negotiate a risk-based contract with management consulting firm McKinsey, covering the main risk areas of the turnaround strategy.
 
In addition to the turnaround initiatives adopted by the board, Eskom said it was faced with other pressing challenges, namely an unfavourable decision by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa on Eskom’s selective reopener tariff application, fulfilling equity injection conditions set by National Treasury, and imminent credit rating reviews by ratings agencies.

“This required Eskom to engage with a variety of service providers to mitigate against these risks with a sense of urgency. These service providers included Deloitte Consulting, Barclays, McKinsey, Citibank, the Public Investment Corporation and Trillian,” said Eskom.
 
The statement emphasises that there is currently no master services agreement (MSA) in effect with McKinsey, Trillian or Regiments Capital.

In June 2015, the Eskom board approved a mandate to negotiate an MSA to help the company address operational and financial challenges that the company had to deal with.

The proposed agreement would be linked explicitly to benefits derived by Eskom, meaning that if no benefits were derived for Eskom, no payment would be made.

“However, the Eskom board decided in June 2016 not to proceed with the MSA,” concluded the statement.