Optimum colliery
Guptas and Zwane ‘drove Glencore to sell colliery’ at Switzerland meeting
Details have emerged for the first time of a two-day visit in 2015 to Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg in Switzerland by then mineral resources minister Mosebenzi Zwane that saw the company make a U-turn on its decision to keep the Optimum colliery. Glencore was on Wednesday the first mining company to give evidence at the commission of inquiry into state capture. The miner and trader featured prominently in former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s 2016 State of Capture report as an example of how the Gupta family, along with state-owned enterprises, manipulated events to their benefit. Outlining the events leading to the virtual collapse of the Optimum colliery, which had supplied Eskom’s Hendrina power plant in Mpumalanga for more than 40 years, former CEO of Glencore Coal SA Clinton Ephron said long-running efforts to keep the mine in production had run foul of new management at Eskom. The power utility imposed significant fines on Optimum for delivering substandard coal and refused...
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