Mungo Soggot
The top government oil trader suspended in March on the instructions of Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna has been awarded a salary increase.
Chair of the Central Energy Fund (CEF), Don Mkhwanazi, confirmed this week that he had upped Kobus van Zyls salary and said he would decide whether to discipline or reinstate Van Zyl by the end of the month.
It is not at all bizarre. Van Zyl has been suspended on full pay. We should not prejudice him, he said. Mkhwanazi said he had contacted his predecessor, Roy Pithey, for a rating of Van Zyls performance. But he had decided that a bonus was not applicable and Van Zyl had been given a standard increase.
Maduna instructed the CEF board to oust Van Zyl on the basis of the preliminary findings of private accountants he hired at the beginning of the year to probe the state oil trading companys accounts.
Accounting firm, Ntsaluba Nkonki Sizwe, was supposed to finish its investigations in May, but the probe expanded amid suspicion that the allegations the minister gleaned from it lacked substance.
Mkhwanazi said the board received the firms reports this week, adding that copies had also been forwarded to the presidents office. He said any disciplinary panel would be made up of external people not CEF management.
Van Zyl said he would wait to see the report before taking any legal action. His lawyers have still to receive official reasons for his suspension.
The Ntsaluba Nkonki Sizwe probe has now triggered a full-blown clash between Maduna and Auditor General Henri Kluever. In June, Maduna accused the attorney general of covering up impropriety after Kluever shot down a string of Madunas allegations based on Ntsaluba Nkonki Sizwes investigations in a special report to Parliament.
Kluevers office audits the oil companys books. The allegations at the centre of the row including the alleged theft of R170- million of oil are now being investigated by the public protector.