{"id":10449,"date":"2020-01-16T04:09:15","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T04:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/?post_type=stories&#038;p=10449"},"modified":"2024-09-20T17:34:51","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T17:34:51","slug":"the-dirt-on-deloittes-consulting-deals-at-eskom-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/the-dirt-on-deloittes-consulting-deals-at-eskom-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The dirt on Deloitte\u2019s consulting deals at Eskom, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For more than two years, Deloitte had managed to avoid being linked to state capture, while rival firms <span class=\"s1\">\u2014 <\/span>McKinsey, KPMG, Bain &amp; Company <span class=\"s1\">\u2014 <\/span>were reeling from the scandal\u2019s fallout.<\/p>\n<p><strong>*<a href=\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Media-statement-16-01-2020final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Deloitte media statement<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That came to an end in October, when Eskom\u2019s then chair, Jabu Mabuza, publicly accused Deloitte of engaging in \u201cpure corruption\u201d with former Eskom executives to secure consulting deals worth R207-million <span class=\"s1\">\u2014 <\/span>a claim Deloitte hotly denies.<\/p>\n<p><em>Like this story? Be an<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/be-an-amab-supporter\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">amaB Supporter<\/a> <\/span>to help us do more. Sign up for our <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/#signup\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">newsletter<\/a><\/span> to get more.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In an explosive affidavit setting out Eskom\u2019s civil claim against Deloitte, Mabuza told the court that \u201ccertain inferences are irresistible\u2026 [B]y early 2016 \u2026 Deloitte was to be the preferred Consulting firm\u201d on certain projects at Eskom.<\/p>\n<p>That Eskom executives bent and broke the rules for Deloitte now seems obvious (read <a href=\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/stories\/the-dirt-on-deloittes-consulting-deals-at-eskom-part-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Dirt on Deloitte&#8217;s consulting deals at Eskom, Part 1<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>The only question is why?<\/p>\n<p>In part 2 we leave behind the safety of documentary evidence <span class=\"s1\">\u2014 <\/span>chronicled in over 1 000 pages of Eskom court papers <span class=\"s1\">\u2014 <\/span>and wade into the murky waters of anonymous and confidential sources. But it is also here where we find person after person insisting that Deloitte\u2019s contracts with Eskom were part of a state capture play.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>The cold shoulder<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>It is worth remembering that before Deloitte, there was another preferred consulting firm at Eskom.<\/p>\n<p>In December 2015, the global consulting giant McKinsey sat down to carve up Eskom\u2019s consulting budget with its new \u201csupplier development\u201d (empowerment) partner, Trillian Capital.<\/p>\n<p>What emerged from the meeting was a spreadsheet detailing how R9.4-billion in consulting fees could be extracted from Eskom over the following four years. McKinsey told us the document was \u201cexploratory\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>But after just three months McKinsey got cold feet, put off by Trillian\u2019s refusal to disclose that it was majority-owned by the Guptas\u2019 business partner, Salim Essa.<\/p>\n<p>In a March 2016 letter, McKinsey told Eskom\u2019s then chief financial officer, Anoj Singh, that it could no longer partner with Trillian but would be happy to pick another empowerment partner.<\/p>\n<p>Sources in Eskom have repeatedly told amaBhungane that when McKinsey dumped Trillian, Eskom officials started giving McKinsey the cold shoulder. By mid-2016, Deloitte was one of several firms whose fortunes were looking up.<\/p>\n<h5>The in-crowd<\/h5>\n<p>The reason amaBhungane started poking around Deloitte in 2018 was a simple, startling fact: Three of the \u201cBig Four\u201d accounting firms\u00a0 PwC, KPMG and Deloitte <span class=\"s1\">\u2014 <\/span>received lucrative consulting contracts from Eskom at the height of state capture, and all three picked Nkonki Inc as their supplier development partner.<\/p>\n<p>Nkonki was not necessarily a bad choice: the pioneering black-owned auditing firm had a small but capable consulting division. But the firm was also in the process of being covertly acquired by Essa.<\/p>\n<p>What our investigations uncovered was that, starting in August 2016, Essa began transferring his interest (and his money) from Trillian to Nkonki, by funding a management buyout led by Nkonki partner Mitesh Patel.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>For more read The Nkonki Pact parts <a href=\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/stories\/the-nkonki-pact-part-3-eskom-funded-essas-capture-of-audit-firm\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/stories\/the-nkonki-pact-part-2-eskoms-new-billion-rand-consulting-deal-for-essa-co\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/stories\/the-nkonki-pact-part-3-eskom-funded-essas-capture-of-audit-firm\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">3<\/a>.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cNkonki was a good, solid, black brand, under the radar. They were the perfect firm to use,\u201d one Nkonki insider told us.<\/p>\n<p>If Nkonki was the new Trillian, we wondered, did that make Deloitte, PwC and KPMG the new McKinseys? Would they be the Trojan horses giving Essa and the Guptas access to the consulting honey pot inside Eskom?<\/p>\n<h5>The modus operandi<\/h5>\n<p>The consulting industry had long been one of the most profitable sites of state capture.<\/p>\n<p>Between 2013 and 2015, McKinsey and its then empowerment partner, Regiments Capital, had extracted almost R2-billion in consulting fees from Transnet, where Singh had been the chief financial officer before moving to Eskom.<\/p>\n<p>What went unnoticed by Transnet (and McKinsey, or so it claims) was that Regiments was passing up to 60% of its fees back to Essa.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe [modus operandi] was to bring in a big entity to bring an appearance of respectability, partner as [a supplier development] partner and then you suck the lifeblood out,\u201d a source at Transnet told us.<\/p>\n<p>But there appeared to be a problem with concluding that Deloitte\u2019s contracts formed part of the same pattern: documents filed in Eskom\u2019s court case show that Deloitte partnered with Nkonki in late 2015; in other words well before Essa was known to have commenced capturing Nkonki.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had made a commitment to work with Nkonki when we had submitted our initial bid\u2026 When we had mobilised our projects initially, Nkonki was part of the delivery team,\u201d Thiru Pillay, Deloitte Consulting\u2019s managing director for Africa told us in an interview last month.<\/p>\n<p>But to understand \u201cwhy Nkonki?\u201d we needed to go back further, two sources insisted.<\/p>\n<h5>The fairytale begins<\/h5>\n<p>\u201cThe end of 2015 is actually where the fairytale begins,\u201d said one of three Nkonki insiders we spoke to for this article. The person added: \u201cI was waiting for someone to ask this question about Karthi, he was a major player in all of this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKarthi\u201d is Karthi Naicker, who had spent seven years as the group forensic manager at Transnet, including while it was acquiring vastly overpriced locomotives from a Chinese manufacturer who <a href=\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/stories\/guptaleaks-guptas-and-associates-score-r5-3bn-in-locomotives-kickbacks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">paid massive kickbacks<\/a> to Essa and the Guptas.<\/p>\n<p>(Naicker told us he investigated all allegations that came across his desk at Transnet and the locomotive deal was not among them: \u201cIt was never brought to my attention.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>Naicker was also close to Singh, then still Transnet\u2019s chief financial officer. \u201cHe and Anoj had a very tight relationship,\u201d a Transnet insider told us. \u201cAnoj leaves and goes to Eskom. Karthi then is basically told he needs to get out of Transnet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As head of forensics, Naicker had requested police to investigate a politically-connected security tender that had been approved by Siyabonga Gama; an investigation which almost derailed Gama\u2019s bid to become chief executive of Transnet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGama gets his henchmen to have a conversation with Karthi: \u2018Find your way out, there\u2019s no place for you here,\u2019\u201d the insider said.<\/p>\n<p>Naicker confirmed that in his view he couldn\u2019t stay after Gama\u2019s elevation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[L]et&#8217;s just say that my shelf space and sell-by date was over, there&#8230; obviously coming up against these people was not going to be in my best interest so I had to look at new opportunities and that&#8217;s when I decided to leave,\u201d he told us.<\/p>\n<p>We put this to Gama, who said via WhatsApp that he was unaware of Naicker\u2019s role in the case and reiterated that he, Gama, was never criminally charged. \u201cI have nothing against Naicker, anything that he says was initiated by me leading to his departure from Transnet is a figment of his imagination. It was his guilt for conspiring with a political board to falsely charge an innocent man that would have led him to depart.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Whether Naicker was pushed out or left voluntarily, Nkonki saw an opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey started working to get Karthi over to Nkonki,\u201d a second Nkonki insider told us.<\/p>\n<h5>The rainmaker?<\/h5>\n<p>In September 2015, Naicker joined Nkonki to head up the firm\u2019s consulting and forensics business.<\/p>\n<p>Staff were told that Naicker\u2019s \u201cconnections with government would open doors\u201d, the first Nkonki insider told us.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKarthi was moved to Nkonki to get these contracts,\u201d Nkonki insider number two told us. And if proposals came from Karthi, \u201cAnoj would sign it,\u201d a third alleged.<\/p>\n<p>But Naicker pushed back: \u201cI refute any of those allegations that I was specifically put into Nkonki\u2026 It wasn&#8217;t like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asked about his apparently close relationship with Singh, Naicker said: \u201cHe was a colleague of mine. I worked at Transnet so obviously we had a working relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Either way, by mid 2016 the flood gates were opening.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNkonki started getting work out of Eskom \u2013 a huge amount of work,\u201d the first Nkonki insider told us.<\/p>\n<p>When Patel, Nkonki\u2019s chief executive, later spoke about the firm\u2019s meteoric rise at Eskom, it was his own \u201cclose ties\u201d to Singh, and not Naicker\u2019s, that he emphasised.<\/p>\n<p>During our research, we were handed a recording of a conversation with Patel where he boasted: \u201cI won\u2019t lie, since Anoj moved from Transnet to Eskom the doors opened for us there because I know Anoj.\u201d<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h5>Second chances<\/h5>\n<p>One of the reasons we found it odd that Deloitte and PwC had picked Nkonki as a partner at Eskom was that Nkonki was not initially eligible for the work.<\/p>\n<p>In July 2016, Eskom established the Strategic, Business and Management Consulting panel, consisting of nine international consulting firms (panel A), and 18 up-and-coming black-owned firms (panel B).<\/p>\n<p>Nkonki had applied to be part of panel B, but with a technical score of 66%, had failed to make the cut.<\/p>\n<p>When both Deloitte and PwC submitted bids in September 2016, they knew their contracts required them to subcontract to \u201cpanel B members only\u201d. Despite this, they largely overlooked the 18 firms on panel B and picked Nkonki.<\/p>\n<p>The only exception from panel B was In4Group. Deloitte allocated it just 1% of the so-called Results Management Office project fee <span class=\"s1\">\u2014 <\/span>26% would go to Nkonki.<\/p>\n<p>Then, curiously, days after the bids closed, Eskom\u2019s board tender committee approved the creation of a new panel <span class=\"s1\">\u2014 <\/span>panel C <span class=\"s1\">\u2014 <\/span>for black-owned companies with a technical score of between 50 and 70%, including Nkonki.<\/p>\n<p>Naicker, the third Nkonki insider told us, took credit: \u201cHe said, \u2018Nkonki wouldn\u2019t be on the panel if it wasn\u2019t for me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Naicker denies that he said this, and insisted that the decision to create panel C was \u201can Eskom process\u201d which he was not involved in.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the panel was undeniably good news for Nkonki and had the effect of retrospectively fixing the flaw in both PwC and Deloitte\u2019s bids.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe panel was created for Nkonki to get a foot in the door, so they could legitimately provide work to Eskom,\u201d the first Nkonki insider said.<\/p>\n<p>When we asked PwC last year why it had chosen Nkonki despite the firm not being on panel B, legal head Anton du Randt told us: \u201c[T]he process for panel C appointments were well underway, and we had understood that the panel C appointments would be finalised \u2026 imminently, so whether or not [Nkonki] were on the panel on the date that we submitted our first bid I can\u2019t tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Deloitte Africa chief executive Lwazi Bam, by contrast, told us that Deloitte did not know panel C existed until Eskom formally announced it in February 2017, five months after Deloitte submitted its bid.<\/p>\n<p>According to Bam, Deloitte knew the contract said \u201cpanel B members only\u201d, but Nkonki had already worked on the project with Deloitte for several months before the contract was awarded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt would have been counter-productive, and would have placed the running projects at risk, to remove Nkonki from these assignments \u2026 and neither did Eskom require us to do so,\u201d he told us in a 13-page letter last year.<\/p>\n<h5>Betting on Nkonki<\/h5>\n<p>The theory, put forward by several sources we spoke to, was that Nkonki was one of the beneficiaries of an unwritten rule. \u201cIf you don\u2019t do business \u2026 with these entities you ain\u2019t getting any work,\u201d the Transnet insider told us.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy understanding is they were told to partner with Nkonki, they didn\u2019t have a choice\u2026 It was an instruction,\u201d the first Nkonki insider said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe big \u2026 firms didn\u2019t like partnering, but because Anoj was there he made it clear they had to partner with Nkonki,\u201d the second Nkonki insider said.<\/p>\n<p>Singh declined to answer our questions, merely saying: \u201cI was not part of any of the procurement team[s] that made the award of any tenders at Eskom.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When we put this theory to PwC last year, Fulvio Tonelli, PWC Africa\u2019s chief operating officer, insisted that Nkonki was their choice. \u201cNobody said to us you need to use [Nkonki] if you want to secure this work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Asked again about the allegations, Tonelli said: \u201cPwC was not instructed to, nor would we accept such instruction to, partner with Nkonki Inc or any other third party at the insistence of a client.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Response-from-PwC-Fulvio-Tonelli.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Read Tonelli\u2019s letter<\/a>.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Deloitte also rejected the insiders\u2019 theory.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll the [supplier development] partners used by Deloitte on work for Eskom were chosen by Deloitte,\u201d Bam wrote <span class=\"s1\">\u2014<\/span><span class=\"s1\">\u00a0<\/span>adding that Deloitte had also lost bids submitted with Nkonki.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe did not need Nkonki to sell our work or position our work for us,\u201d Pillay confidently told us.<\/p>\n<p>Naicker also insisted that Deloitte \u201capproached us \u2026 they secured the work with Eskom.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But in the recorded conversation, Patel appears to say the opposite:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDeloitte and PwC are not happy with us because they\u2019re forced to use us on all these contracts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou look at the Capital Scrub\u201d \u2013 a reference to the PwC contract that was potentially worth billions \u2013 \u201cwe\u2019re taking a large chunk out of it. And it\u2019s just because we are panel C, they are panel A. And they were asked to partner with us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although he later says, \u201cThey could have partnered with any firm.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Twenty minutes later in the recording, Patel says: \u201cActually, PwC came to us to say, \u2018We want to tender for the Capital Scrub\u2019. We said, okay, but we told them we don\u2019t have the skills yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to Patel, PwC solved this problem by introducing Nkonki to a panel B member that had the necessary skills. Nkonki simply subcontracted it.<\/p>\n<p>Despite their extraordinary outreach to Nkonki, both PwC and Deloitte insist they were ignorant of their partner\u2019s connection to Essa and the Guptas when they partnered with them in 2016. But events would soon change that.<\/p>\n<h5>Going nuclear<\/h5>\n<p>At the start of November 2016, three things happened in quick succession:<\/p>\n<p>On 1 November, Deloitte submitted an unsolicited proposal to Eskom to develop the business case for the contentious nuclear build programme.<\/p>\n<p>On the same day, Deloitte received a letter from Nkonki, informing it that the firm\u2019s founders <span class=\"s1\">\u2014 <\/span>Sindi Zilwa and Mzi Nkonki <span class=\"s1\">\u2014 <\/span>had sold their shares to minority shareholder Mitesh Patel who would now take over as chief executive of Nkonki.<\/p>\n<p>What few people knew, including the executives at Deloitte, they say, was that Patel\u2019s takeover had been engineered and financed by Essa, who would be entitled to 65% of Nkonki\u2019s rapidly-growing profits.<\/p>\n<p>Then, on 2 November, the public protector\u2019s State of Capture report was released and the extent of Essa and the Guptas\u2019 influence at Eskom was laid bare.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen the State of Capture report was issued, for the first time we understood what was going on at Eskom,\u201d Pillay told us.<\/p>\n<p>Over the next two months, Deloitte conducted what it described as a \u201crigorous account review\u201d of its Eskom work and put in place a \u201cseparate governance forum\u201d to monitor work at Eskom going forward.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur BEE sub-contractors and their activities were a point of discussion from a delivery, quality and risk perspective,\u201d Bam said.<\/p>\n<p>But the explosive contents of the public protector\u2019s report did not put the brakes on Deloitte\u2019s involvement in the nuclear project. That piece of work, along with its budget of R14.9-million, was simply added as a modification to one of Deloitte\u2019s existing contracts.<\/p>\n<h5>Joining the dots<\/h5>\n<p>By 2017, Nkonki was one of three firms that was \u201cpumping inside Eskom,\u201d according to the recorded conversation with Patel.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from the PwC and Deloitte contracts, KPMG had picked Nkonki as its partner for another major consulting contract at Eskom.<\/p>\n<p>KPMG told us it selected Nkonki because \u201cKPMG had previously worked with Nkonki on other assignments\u201d and \u201cNkonki had the necessary skills and experience\u201d. KPMG also said it sought and received confirmation from Eskom that Nkonki was now an eligible member of the panel.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Response-from-KPMG.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Read KPMG\u2019s letter to us<\/a>.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At Transnet, Nkonki submitted two unsolicited bids <span class=\"s1\">\u2014 <\/span>identify cost-saving initiatives and boost sales on the iron ore and coal lines <span class=\"s1\">\u2014 <\/span>and, with no tender, was awarded an open-ended consulting contract for \u201cup to R500-million\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Documents filed with the Zondo commission show Nkonki\u2019s proposal bore astonishing similarities to a scandalous McKinsey-Trillian project that bled R1.6-billion from Eskom.<\/p>\n<p>But by this time rumours were starting the circulate about who was behind the meteoric rise in Nkonki\u2019s fortunes.<\/p>\n<p>An international consulting firm provided information to amaBhungane on condition that we did not name it. The firm showed us a due diligence report where it had rejected Nkonki, supposedly based on information from \u201ctwo independent sources\u201d about Nkonki\u2019s connection with the Guptas.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile it&#8217;s important to note the sources did not provide hard evidence or specific allegations of corruption, they both said \u2026 that Mr [Ajay] Gupta may have made representations for Nkonki to receive state contracts,\u201d a consultant from the firm told us.<\/p>\n<p>Patel, who denied Gupta connections when we first reported on it, would not answer specific questions for this article. His attorney wrote in reply that we had \u201cirreparably destroyed\u201d his client\u2019s business and personal life and as such \u201che will not indulge you or the Press any further\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>He added that Patel denied any allegations that may negatively impact him.<\/p>\n<p>But the rumours did not go away; in mid-2017, Deloitte was hearing the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[W]e had heard rumours,\u201d Pillay confirmed. \u201c[W]e then considered what we were hearing and we terminated the business partner agreement with Nkonki in about mid-2017.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But, inexplicably, Deloitte did not remove Nkonki from the projects at Eskom. Instead Nkonki was allowed to stay on at Eskom for another three months to complete the consulting projects the two firms were working on together.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[W]e were hearing anecdotal rumours. To terminate a contract, you would have needed a little bit more\u2026 The view we took was \u2026 we can exercise our discretion. So we did and [said], \u2018Run out your work\u2019\u2026 [B]ack then in 2017, there wasn&#8217;t enough data to act otherwise,\u201d Pillay said.<\/p>\n<p>Deloitte did not report its suspicions to anyone at Eskom. Instead it quietly took Eskom\u2019s money, completed the contracts and walked away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think, in hindsight, one could reflect on [the decision not to alert Eskom]. But at the time, we felt the responsible action was to terminate the relationship with Nkonki and let the processes that were running play themselves out,\u201d said Pillay.<\/p>\n<p>Deloitte would eventually receive R207-million from Eskom; Nkonki\u2019s cut was R32.7-million.<\/p>\n<h5>In hindsight<\/h5>\n<p>There are a lot of things that, in hindsight, Deloitte would have done differently.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, receiving multiple contracts worth R207-million with no competitive bidding process looks bad.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>See <a href=\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/stories\/the-dirt-on-deloittes-consulting-deals-at-eskom-part-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The dirt on Deloitte\u2019s consulting contracts at Eskom, Part 1<\/a>.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201c[I]n hindsight things look a certain way,\u201d Pillay conceded. \u201cWhen you look from 2019\u2019s vantage point as to how did Eskom procure services over the last 20 years, you have a certain view.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Partnering with Nkonki, a company that was covertly acquired by the architects of state capture, looks bad too \u2013 particularly when this appears to follow a pattern of big consulting firms extracting millions from state-owned entities by taking Essa and the Guptas along for the ride, whether inadvertently or not.<\/p>\n<p><em>Like this story? Be an<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/be-an-amab-supporter\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">amaB Supporter<\/a> <\/span>to help us do more. Sign up for our <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/#signup\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">newsletter<\/a><\/span> to get more.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can see how one might connect those dots, but I think there is no proof or evidence to suggest that that&#8217;s what happened \u2013 that&#8217;s entirely speculation,\u201d Pillay insisted when we put it to him that Nkonki\u2019s presence may have given Deloitte an advantage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur intent was not to defraud and be corrupt. Our intent was to do the best we could [to] honour the obligation to the client, and to follow their process\u2026 I mean, Anoj, when was he CFO of the year? 2014, 2015 \u2026 we did not appreciate the way the dots have now connected.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWere we enriched by the Gupta network?\u201d Pillay asked later, posing one of his rhetorical questions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbsolutely not.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>*Additional reporting by Sam Sole<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>*We added a link to the story, after publication, to a Deloitte post-publication response.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Part 1 we explained how Deloitte received R207-million worth of consulting work from Eskom through a process that chairman Jabu Mabuza described as difficult to conceive of anything \u201cless fair, equitable, transparent or competitive\u201d. That senior Eskom employees bent and broke the rules for Deloitte now seems obvious. The only question is why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,285,117,4,68],"class_list":["post-10449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-amabhungane","tag-deloitte","tag-eskom","tag-guptas","tag-salim-essa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30272,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10449\/revisions\/30272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}