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Cape Town - Hopefully the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) has sufficient capacity and expertise assigned to its investigations of state capture at Eskom and Transnet, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) said on Friday.
The advocacy group said such capacity and expertise would be needed so that the SIU "can go deep and wide on the many issues they will encounter, and that there will be no political interference or meddling".
Outa said an in-depth investigation of state capture at Eskom and Transnet is urgently needed. Therefore, it welcomed the new SIU investigation into these two state-owned enterprises.
Bloomberg reported earlier that President Cyril Ramaphosa referred allegations of mismanagement and graft at Eskom and Transnet to the SIU. It reported that Ramaphosa said in the Government Gazette on Friday that the SIU must include “any alleged serious maladministration in connection with the affairs of the institutions” in its investigations.
Other terms include probing unlawful appropriation or expenditure of public money or property and improper conduct by employees of the companies.
OUTA said the investigation into Eskom and Transnet is for actions since January 2010, including coal and diesel contracts and maladministration in the Medupi, Kusile and Ingula power station projects.
It must also probe contracting and purchasing of goods and services by Transnet.
The investigation must include “any undisclosed or unauthorised interests” which Eskom and Transnet employees had in service providers contracted to their employers.
In the view of the advocacy group, this will help to expose state capture and enable strong action to be taken on the abuse of state funds.
“We welcome this initiative which is long overdue,” said OUTA CEO Wayne Duvenage.
“We hope that they engage with various civil action organisations and political parties who have done so much work in exposing and gathering the facts related to many of the cases they will be looking into.”
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