Ex-Eskom boss Matshela Koko challenges state capture reports in court
Former Eskom boss Matshela Koko accused the state capture commission of being biased against him in court papers filed as part of a challenge to the commission’s reports.
Koko filed a review application with the Joburg High Court this week to quash various findings the state capture commission of inquiry made against him in its reports.
He’s not challenging the commission’s recommendations that include potentially prosecuting him over Gupta-owned Tegeta’s takeover of Optimum Coal Mine.
This is beyond the prosecution that he already faces linked to millions of rands worth of dodgy contracts at Kusile Power Station.
Koko wants the court to set aside certain findings, remarks, and conclusions contained in the reports that he says “are not relationally connected to the evidence before it”.
In his founding affidavit, Koko said the commission’s recommendations are not “final in character nor binding on law enforcement agencies” and that an investigation could, in any case, clear him.
He insisted that he only ever acted in what he believed were the best interests of Eskom but that the commission ignored his affidavits and didn’t properly interrogate witnesses who implicated him because it was biased against him.
Koko said his perception was that the commission’s legal team and investigators came in with a “theory about the case” and argued that they were biased in their efforts to prove this theory and counter any alternatives.
He argued the commission failed to interrogate critical witnesses which he says would have “weakened the narrative against [him]”.
Instead, he said, their evidence was accepted as a common cause – especially when it implicated him.
Koko added that the commission’s approach “lacked rigour” mainly when it came to testimony in support of the version he says the commission’s legal team and investigators favoured.
The commission, Koko said, failed to examine witnesses who were “hiding the truth” because it was biased.
-EWN
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