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By Baldwin Ndaba 
9h ago
Johannesburg: Details of how senior company officials at EOH Holdings, a major ICT player, allegedly misled SANDF and the Department of Water and Sanitation, were exposed in the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into the state capture on Monday.
The details were revealed by the company’s group chief executive, Stephen van Coller, who appeared before the commission.
He told the chairman of the commission, Supreme Court Vice President Raymond Zondo, that he was instrumental in terminating several dubious and controversial government contracts awarded to EOH prior to his appointment in September 2018.
Van Coller told the commission that he agreed to accept employment with EOH at the time after failing to accept the terms in the past while still employed in the banking industry and later in the telecommunications industry.
According to him, he was alerted to the company’s “dubious and dubious” deals when he received a letter from Microsoft about its intention to terminate its contract with EOH.
“The letter was signed by Microsoft’s legal officer in practice. Microsoft said it would terminate the contract in 30 days. Since I knew the previous Microsoft CEO, I contacted him about his intentions. He said he was not aware of the details but received instructions from his Dublin headquarters to terminate the contract, ”said Van Coller.
He said he then summoned his senior officials to provide him with information.
“During my research, I discovered that the issue was related to the software license. EOH had overcharged SANDF. They had also bypassed Sita to obtain software licenses for the military.
“If EOH had gone through Sita, they would have gotten those software licenses much cheaper. The same happened with the SAP software in the Department of Water and Sanitation.
“The Department of Water and Sanitation wanted 20,000 software licenses, but only 15,000 were issued to them, but at a higher price,” said Van Coller.
He said the two cases were part of fraudulent activities that resulted in the loss of billions of rand by the ICT company.
According to Van Coller, prior to his tenure, EOH paid bribes to politicians and high-level officials in municipalities to obtain massive tenders.
He said he turned all the evidence over to the Hawks and the Special Investigation Unit, who had now concluded their investigations and were ready to attack the rogue officers.
Political Bureau
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