ALLAN GREENBLO: MultiChoice must face the music
If KPMG is to be pilloried, then DStv’s gift to the Guptas can’t be ignored
There’s an odour of hypocrisy that surrounds the Gupta imbroglio. Self-appointed judges of commercial morality, who’ve poured opprobrium on accounting firm KPMG, can be accused of double standards if they don’t apply a similar approach to television company MultiChoice. Where these judges have been particular asset managers, they cannot be outspoken on the one and not the other. But they have a problem: while they could vent their spleen against KPMG, in which they aren’t invested, they need to be constrained on MultiChoice, to whose Naspers parent they’re heavily exposed. Eccentric treatment was extended by both KPMG and MultiChoice to Gupta-controlled entities. In the case of KPMG, it focused on the professionally flawed audits of Oakbay Resources. In the case of MultiChoice, it focuses on the generosity of multimillion-rand payments to television channel ANN7, kept secret from other content suppliers who enjoy no comparable favour for distribution on the DStv bouquet. In the beha...
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