Eskom’s contested private intelligence files clearly ‘cannot be ignored’, SIU chief tells Parliament

Useful, real and serious – that’s how the contested private intelligence files commissioned by former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter are now being seen by key law enforcement agencies.

“It’s clear that, between the Hawks and the SIU [Special Investigating Unit], they have found the intelligence reports very useful,” said George Fivaz, whose company conducted the intelligence-gathering operation on Eskom’s internal crime cartels.

“They have special teams investigating. So, I don’t think it’s about the rubbishing of the reports any more. That’s old news.”

He was speaking on Friday, 15 September, three days after Advocate Andy Mothibi, head of the SIU, and Lieutenant General Godfrey Lebeya, head of the Hawks, had appeared before Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa). Fivaz was simply rephrasing for Daily Maverick what had been placed on public record in the National Assembly.

On Tuesday, 12 September, about 42 minutes into proceedings, Mothibi had stated the following: “The [files] cannot be ignored, because [they] have information that can point to … areas that require investigation. That is clear.”

This adjective – “clear” – had been used by both Mothibi and Fivaz to describe the latest assessment of the files’ value. Of course, as the founder and executive director of George Fivaz Forensic & Risk (GFFR), this was the result that Fivaz had been waiting for since 26 April, when an explosive series of articles in News24 had dismissed the files as “outlandish conspiracy theories”.

On 1 June, in fact, as Daily Maverick readers may remember, a practising advocate, former police superintendent and author of key textbooks for the SA Police Service (SAPS), Cerita Joubert had published a legal opinion that reached the conclusion that Mothibi would arrive at more than three months later – but, at the time, her opinion had likewise been dismissed by News24. However, the jury was in – according to top law enforcement officials, the Fivaz intelligence files were useful, real and serious. And there was no doubt, based on his latest presentation to Scopa, that Mothibi and his team had read every word of the roughly 1,500 pages that the files contained. 

The 13 monthly intelligence reports, 348 agent reports and various diagrams, Mothibi informed Scopa, had been divided by the SIU into 54 broad themes.

Of those, he added, 22 themes had remained within the mandate of the SIU, and the remaining 32 themes had been handed over to the Hawks (formally the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, or DPCI).

For his part, in his own presentation to Scopa on 12 September, Lebeya of the Hawks offered a similar level of insight.

“Certain role players in the [agent reports] were implicated in multiple individual reports,” he stated. “So, one had to do analysis of all the reports to try to make sense of how they related to each other.”

Lebeya then moved on to the allegations of criminal activities contained in the files, beginning with the sabotage of critical Eskom infrastructure. 

“The emergency procurement processes may have been utilised to obtain contracts,” he noted with respect to one of the apparent motives, “and Eskom, obviously facing an emergency, may have had no choice but to pay the excessive fees charged to address these emergencies.”

Regarding the next item, procurement fraud and corruption, Lebeya suggested that the intelligence files provided crucial detail on how “most of the companies that were identified” did not follow the requisite Eskom procedures.

On the Hawks boss went, alighting soon on the “coal mafia”, which the files implicated in “coal theft” and “illegal coal yards” in and around certain power stations in Mpumalanga.

“There were also prominent and influential persons that were mentioned,” Lebeya added under this item, “and as the SIU has stated, there are names that have been [cited] in these reports. We have analysed them and seen [them], but what we need is evidence to link them to specific crimes.”

Here, of course, Lebeya was referring to the two senior ANC politicians who had famously been implicated in the Fivaz files – names that had been known to Daily Maverick since early December 2022, when we first took possession of the diagrams and dossiers.

And indeed, Mothibi had touched on this extremely sensitive subject too.

“There are names mentioned in the reports,” the SIU boss had informed Scopa about 15 minutes earlier, “but at this stage we would like the investigations to unfold before we undergo a legal risk.”

What both Mothibi and Lebeya were implicitly saying, then, was that the Fivaz files had furnished law enforcement with enough raw information and intelligence to warrant a full-scale search for proof of the politicians’ involvement.

But would that particular search ever begin in earnest?

The answer, by Daily Maverick’s reckoning, was not a simple “yes” or “no” – because, though it was indeed “clear” now that the files were being taken seriously, the suggestions of political interference were as strong as ever.

Also, we had our own documentary proof, which indicated not only that security agencies were being less than truthful in their statements on when, exactly, they had come into possession of the files, but also that this fudged timeline may have been hiding a more troubling truth: that the delay in acting on the Fivaz reports had allowed for the destruction of key evidence.

Subterfuge with receipts 

Receipt signed by Brigadier Jap Burger in November 2022 for sections of the Fivaz intelligence files. (Images: Supplied)

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.