Mungo Soggot
Penuell Maduna’s Liberian adviser, Emanuel Shaw II, took $10 000 from a top European oil trader after saying he could promote the trader’s interests with the minister.
Maduna knew of the transaction and asked another businessman – and not Shaw – to repay the trader the money Shaw had taken. The trader, Fakhry Abdelnour, a prominent Egyptian who heads a Geneva-based oil company, was not reimbursed.
Maduna has already admitted seeking unpaid advice from Shaw, who has secured a R3- million-a-year job to steer the restructuring of the state oil company, the Central Energy Fund.
But despite ordering a full investigation into how Shaw got the job, Maduna has refused to distance himself from the Liberian. It is now clear that Shaw – who has bragged to many about his access to Maduna and Deputy President Thabo Mbeki – was at times a close confidant of the minister.
Shaw returned from Liberia this week and is due to attend the state oil company’s bosberaad in the Drakensberg this weekend. He failed last week in a bid to gag the Mail & Guardian from publishing more information about him, and threatened another high court interdict this Thursday.
Abdelnour, the head of African Middle East Petroleum, told the M&G this week the transaction with Shaw took place in Abdelnour’s suite at the Sandton Sun & Towers Intercontinental Hotel last November. He said that during the lunch Shaw told him he was ”a good channel” to Maduna.
”He bragged about how close he was to the minister,” recalled Abdelnour, ”and he said he was going to have dinner with Maduna that night. During the lunch he made me understand he needed $10 000 in his account in Florida.”
Abdelnour said he called his bank and made the transfer. The M&G has a copy of the bank deposit slip. He said Shaw contacted him again while he was in Moscow a few weeks later and asked if they could repeat the same transaction, only this time he offered to repay Abdelnour in South Africa – which would have been foreign-exchange fraud. Abdelnour refused.
Abdelnour, who has co-ordinated a longstanding contract between South Africa’s state oil company and the Egyptian National Oil Company, said about a month earlier he had given Shaw the draft of a letter that he suggested Maduna write to his Egyptian counterpart to renew the contract. The two were lunching at the Marco Polo restaurant in Johannesburg.
Abdelnour said Shaw had later reported that the minister ”wanted to do it his way”. In the end, the contract was drastically cut and Abdelnour was excluded from any further deals. A month later, at the Sandton Towers lunch, Shaw reminded Abdelnour that he could promote Abdelnour’s interests with the minister.
Abdelnour said Shaw frequently boasted how close he was to Mbeki. The deputy president has dismissed any suggestion of a special relationship with Shaw. Abdelnour said Shaw acted in an obsequious manner to the minister in his presence, referring to Maduna as ”my minister”.
Three sources have confirmed that Maduna – who himself has a reputation for never accepting money – asked another businessman to repay Abdelnour.
Maduna was in Windhoek this week and could not be contacted for comment by his special adviser, Thulani Gcabashe.
Shaw’s version this week was that Abdelnour had wanted to recruit him as a consultant: ”It had nothing to do with the minister.” Asked why $10 000 had been paid into a US bank account for him, Shaw said: ”That was a simple matter of a transfer. We never entered into an agreement. I asked him to make a transfer for personal expenses and I would repay him here.”
Asked why he never did repay Abdelnour, Shaw continued: ”No, no, no. This was a pay cheque, but when it was decided I would not act on his behalf, I asked him to send me a bill, which he never has. In the end I decided not to take up the assignment.” Shaw denied approaching Abdelnour again in Moscow.
Abdelnour scoffed at Shaw’s consultancy story: ”What would I do with his consultancy? To do what? What are his qualifications? He bragged about his relationship with the minister and then told me of his problem in Florida. He didn’t give me any chance to say no.”
He said Shaw’s knowledge of the oil business ”is equal to nil. At one point I thought I was in Disney. One of the schemes he was trying to sell to the minister was to pipeline oil all over Africa.”
It is understood that while he was working with the minister last year, Shaw recommended to Maduna he appoint Don Mkhwanazi to head the Central Energy Fund, the former chairman of which retired in March.
Mkhwanazi, who gave Shaw the lucrative state oil consulting job without advertising the post, has been involved with Shaw since at least 1992. Maduna has denied Shaw had any input over Mkhwanazi’s appointment.
That Shaw was involved in the reworking of the Egyptian National Petroleum Company oil contracts is an interesting twist to the saga of the suspension of the oil company’s top oil trader, Kobus van Zyl. Van Zyl was suspended in March, after a team of auditors appointed by Maduna raised questions about the Egyptian contracts.
The auditor general’s dismissal of this and other allegations against Van Zyl supported earlier speculation that he could have been the subject of a witchhunt by Maduna. Van Zyl’s lawyers have still not been told why he was suspended, and he is due to face a disciplinary inquiry next month.
As Shaw’s powerful role in the government’s oil business has become clear, there has also been speculation that it was he who encouraged the minister to pursue Van Zyl. Shaw occupies Van Zyl’s office at the state oil company’s Johannesburg headquarters – when he is not abroad on Liberian state business as ”ambassador extraordinaire” for the west African country’s new leader, Charles Taylor.
Abdelnour said he is convinced Shaw is behind Van Zyl’s ousting because Shaw could never have pulled off his state oil job coup with Van Zyl on the scene.
He said that at another lunch last year, attended by Maduna and Shaw, Shaw vigorously criticised Van Zyl. Shaw claimed it was Van Zyl who tipped off the home affairs department that he was working illegally at the state oil company in 1995. (See Page 4.)
The investigators who probed Van Zyl have compiled a bulky report on the state oil company’s books. Mkhwanazi, meanwhile, has accused the M&G of racism for its coverage of Shaw, and of reporting the Shaw scandal to distract attention from Van Zyl.
Shaw denied this week he was ever involved in sanctions-busting. He said Maduna – who confirmed last week that he knew Shaw had been involved in sanctions-busting – was mistaken. He also denied writing a letter in 1989 in which he documented a number of corrupt businesses he had run while serving under former Liberian dictator Samuel Doe. The letter was admitted as evidence in a court case in the US.
* Mkhwanazi has stressed that the R3- million contract was not with Shaw and his son, Emanuel Shaw III, but with Shaw’s company, International Advisory Services (IAS). The M&G reported last week that it was Mkhwanazi’s Durban law firm, Mooney, Ford & Partners, which set up the company last year with nominee directors from the law firm.
The firm’s senior partner, Barry Garland, said this week that when he resigned as a director of IAS and new shareholders and directors were appointed, Shaw again did not feature. Yet when Shaw signed his contract with the state oil company, he described himself as IAS executive director.
Shaw said this week he had been made a director of the company, but that the change had yet to be reflected in the company’s papers. This could not be confirmed.