The probe which prompted Van Zyl’s suspension is far from complete, raising suspicions of a witch-hunt, reports Mungo Soggot
SOUTH AFRICA’S top state oil official, suspended last week, is taking the blame for a sanctions-busting deal cut for the former government. No evidence has yet been found that he personally benefited from the deal.
It also emerged this week that Mineral and Energy Affairs Minister Penuell Maduna selected the auditors – whose preliminary report triggered the suspension of Kobus van Zyl, general manager of the Strategic Fuel Fund (SFF) – because they were formerly “deprived”. Maduna’s office said:”We don’t want to bring in establishment people” and criticised the existing auditors.
Maduna’s new auditing firm, Ntsaluba Nkonki Sizwe, have refused to comment on whether it has experience investigating international oil deals.
The auditors only started investigating in February and have not questioned the official who was Van Zyl’s superior at the time the deals were signed.
Maduna’s office said this week that Van Zyl had been suspended on “probable cause”, but it did not know when the investigation would be completed. Maduna’s adviser, Walter Gcabashe, said the investigators had found no “direct evidence” of personal enrichment and had yet to quantify the losses for which Van Zyl is being blamed.
Van Zyl’s suspension follows a series of departures by senior white officials from government agencies working under Maduna. The board of the Central Energy Fund (CEF), which oversees the SFF, has recently been revamped with the appointment of black directors. Their oil industry background is limited.
It is understood that publication of the CEF’s latest annual results, believed to be exceptionally good, has been postponed. Maduna’s reasons for this are not known. The SFF, the oil trading business which Van Zyl runs, is thought to have made a profit of more than R200-million.
According to Maduna’s office, Ntsaluba Nkonki Sizwe’s report, which examines two contracts which SFF signed in 1992 and subsequently renewed to buy oil from Egypt, found South Africa was paying an extra seven US cents a barrel. Gcabashe says the minister called in the auditing team after reviewing the contracts, which are renewed annually, last November.
Van Zyl was suspended 10 days ago at a board meeting in Mossel Bay attended by Maduna. Van Zyl’s wife said this week that Maduna had ordered them not to talk to the press.
But Danie Vorster, CEF chairman and Van Zyl’s superior until 1994, was not contacted during the probe. Vorster, currently managing director of the state- owned phosphate operation Foskor, confirmed this but declined further comment.
CEF, whose other businesses include the synthetic fuel producer Mossgas and oil exploration company Soekor, only completed its transformation into a normal commercial company in 1994.
Until then, its main business was to navigate the maze of fuel sanctions which were in place until the end of 1993. It was empowered to pay anything necessary to bring oil into the country. CEF has frequently been accused of acting in an unaccountable manner – partly because of the need for secrecy and partly because of the laissez faire attitude of previous energy ministers.
One official, who has seen the report, told the Mail & Guardian that he believed that thus far there was insufficient “substance” to warrant Van Zyl’s suspension. He said that if Van Zyl had continued paying a commission on the post-sanctions contract renewals, he may have been guilty merely of bad judgment.
One African National Congress oil industry expert said Maduna wanted to flush out the old guard. Only two members of the old white board have survived Maduna’s revamp.
Among those who have left Maduna’s domain are department director general Gert Venter, who retired earlier this year, and diamond board head Gerhard Bindeman, who was dismissed at the end of last year.
But Gcabashe dismissed suggestions of a witch-hunt. “There is always talk when there are changes … there is lots wrong with the present establishment.”
He also criticised the CEF’s current auditors – the auditor general and international accounting firm Price Waterhouse.
“If they didn’t detect anything, it would be unwise to keep them on,” he added. “We don’t need them if they can’t pick up things like that. They have tried to conceal several things regarding the Egyptian deal and possibly other deals.”
There were several “curious and questionable” aspects, in particular payments on the deals to a middleman in Switzerland named in the report as “Sakri”.
Van Zyl has been criticised in the past as a creature of the old order, but has won respect in ANC oil industry circles. A senior ANC official said that when he first met Van Zyl he thought he was “the old regime incarnate. But I soon he realised he knew his stuff and that if he could do it [oil trading] for the volk, he could do it for us.”