General Electric and Murray & Roberts have gone to court accusing Eskom of rigging a R4bn tender to go to state owned Chinese firm Dongfang. A series of internal Eskom documents and reports by audit firm KPMG, which was appointed to conduct an independent review of the procurement process, provide a paper trail of how the deal was allegedly cooked. The story begins in March 2014, when one of Duvha’s six boilers blew up, yanking 600MW off the national grid at a time of rolling blackouts. After two years of wrangling, Eskom’s chief financial officer, Anoj Singh, signed a settlement agreement with a consortium of insurance companies and reinsurers in February 2016. The settlement contained a clause that Eskom would be liable for a penalty of R1.7bn if it did not conclude a binding contract with a supplier by March 31 2017. Eskom issued its first tender to replace the boiler in December 2015. On June 22 2016 the power utility released a statement saying it had held negotiations with thr...
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