Transnet and the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) have finally asked the high court to cancel the state logistics company\u2019s contracts for the procurement of 1\u00a0064 locomotives \u2013 the scene of the Gupta\u2019s greatest known looting.<\/p>\n
Transnet, then headed by chief executive Brian Molefe and chief financial officer Anoj Singh, both Gupta associates, awarded the contracts, worth some R54-billion, to original equipment manufacturers General Electric, Bombardier Transportation, China South Rail (CSR) and China North Rail (CNR) in 2014.<\/p>\n
Transnet and the SIU said in a statement that their papers, filed today, show that the procurement \u201cwas based on a flawed market demand strategy \u2026 and that the laws, government instructions and Transnet policy were deliberately ignored to make the tender awards, conclude the contracts and effect payment to some of the [manufacturers].\u201d<\/p>\n
They said the manufacturers were \u201cnot entitled to benefit from locomotive supply agreements that were awarded to them in an irregular and illegal manner, and particularly not when the [manufacturers] conducted themselves in the manner that CSR and CNR did\u201d.<\/p>\n
Echoing amaBhungane and its #GuptaLeaks partners\u2019 expos\u00e9s since 2017, Transnet and the SIU referred to kickback agreements concluded with Hong Kong-based Gupta fronts Regiments Asia and Tequesta Group. \u201cIt is argued that given the nature of the kickback agreements concluded by the parent company of CSR and CNR, they cannot claim to be innocent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Our reporting has shown<\/a> that the two Chinese manufacturers concluded contracts to pay the Guptas and their associates R9-billion in kickbacks on R42-billion of contracts from Transnet. These spanned the lion\u2019s share of the 1 064 procurement and further locomotive orders. By late 2016, Gupta fronts had already received R3.7-billion.<\/p>\n CSR and CNR have since merged to form CRRC Corporation, the world\u2019s largest rail equipment supplier. It is listed in Hong Kong and Shanghai with the Chinese state as controlling shareholder.<\/p>\n Transnet and the SIU also claimed General Electric and Bombardier could not \u201cclaim that they did not or could not reasonably have known that the procurement process and subsequent contracts were irregular and unlawful\u201d.<\/p>\n The court action is much delayed. Transnet said in a December 2019 statement that it would \u201capproach the court to declare unlawful and set aside all four locomotive contracts\u201d. After that, however, new management was appointed and it appears Transnet went back to the legal drawing board.<\/p>\n Transnet and the SIU said their application \u201cis lengthy. The founding affidavit is over 800 pages and the annexures stretch into many lever arch files. The application is based on the extraction and analysis of over 29 million documents.\u201d<\/p>\n In December, the Revenue Service convinced the high court to freeze R2.8-billion<\/a> in local CRRC accounts, following an earlier temporary Reserve Bank freeze<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Finally, Trasnet and the SIU ask the high court to overturn R54-billion worth of locomotive contracts \u2013 the most expensive known to have been affected by state capture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10,11,55],"class_list":["post-13665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-gupta","tag-guptaleaks","tag-transnet"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13665","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30139,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13665\/revisions\/30139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}