Eskom chief financial officer Anoj Singh.
Embattled Gupta-linked Eskom chief financial officer Anoj Singh on Wednesday said he had earned the R1.9-million cash bonus he received in the last financial year – but seemed to have a poor grasp on the payments the company had made to him.
“I think certainly I’m relatively comfortable with the value of the incentive bonus,” Singh said about the number, which is nearly 40% of his annual R4.8-million salary.
His comfort was based on the role he had played during the year in turning around Eskom’s financial fortunes, Singh said.
The annual results reflected an 83% year-on-year decline in profits, with big leaps in liabilities.
But Singh could not explain why Eskom also paid him R522 000 in “other” payments in the year, payments its financial statements identified as “fees related to telephone costs, security services and operating vehicle expenditure”.
“I’m not aware of the details but can look into it,” Singh said when questioned why that number had increased 35 times compared with the 2016 payment made to him.
Singh was not Eskom’s financial officer for the full duration of the 2016 financial year, but on an annualised basis his “other” payments would have come to just R15 000. In that year the “other” fees made up 0.2% of his total payments received. In the 2017 year that proportion jumped to 7.2%.
Singh promised to release to the media a document he is “in the process of preparing” that would explain leaked emails showing that he was a regular guest of the Gupta family in Dubai – at their considerable expense – while the family was doing business with his then employer, Transnet.