If external auditors will not confirm figures, why should we believe Eskom’s board?
Media reports show consistent failure of fiduciary duty by the board, and shambolic internal controls over procurement
The recently presented Eskom 2017 financial statements raise serious questions concerning the performance and compliance with respect to applicable legislation and rules by its directors, operational management and external auditors. It is now public knowledge that external auditors SizweNtsalubaGoboda expressed an audit opinion that the financial statements fairly presented in all material respects the financial position of Eskom, with the qualification that Eskom did not have an adequate system for identifying all irregular expenditure and that no satisfactory audit procedures could be performed by the auditors to obtain reasonable assurance that irregular expenditure had in fact been accurately recorded. This was, essentially, a polite way of explaining that the Eskom-supplied figure in the financial statements of R3bn in irregular and wasteful expenditure could not be verified, and that this might be just the tip of the iceberg. Corporate governance and accountability feature pr...
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