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By Loyiso Sidimba 
17h ago
Johannesburg – The Zondo commission will continue to hear evidence related to Denel on Friday from former Denel board chair Daniel Mantsha.
On Thursday, Denel’s acting chief executive, Talib Sadik, revealed that the state-owned aerospace and military technology company was pursuing several current and former senior managers implicated in wrongdoing that nearly collapsed the entity.
Sadik told the commission that several current and former executives implicated in illegal activities had been referred to the Hawks and would also face civil action to recoup Denel’s losses.
According to Sadik, Denel had brought charges under the Prevention of Organized Crime Act against the executives and senior managers identified in the investigations by Ngidi Business Advisory, Dentons and BDO.
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He said Denel’s board was monitoring the criminal charges against the former executives and that meetings had been held between the National Tax Authority and the Hawks on this matter.
Denel is cooperating with the Hawks. We are fully cooperating with them, there have been ongoing investigations, ”he assured Judge Zondo.
Sadik said Denel was also looking at all the deals signed with Gupta-owned VR Laser and had hired ITI defense experts to investigate this issue.
Sadik explained that Denel wanted to know if he was paying fair market-related fees for the lucrative contracts.
“It will form the basis for a civil action against the VR laser,” he said.
Sadik promised that once the draft reports were completed, Denel would move on to the next stage.
“We are addressing the problems as much as possible and we act by reporting them to the police,” he said.
Sadik also said that Denel had instructed a senior attorney to review the reports and advise his board accordingly in order to recover any losses caused to the entity by the officials involved.
He said Denel had also suffered reputational damage, especially with the banks that financed some of his larger transactions.
However, Sadik explained that Ngidi’s investigation had run into problems after Denel approached the company, but instead indicated that he no longer wanted to complete the task.
He said that the Ngidi report refers to annexes but they are not attached to it.
Sadik also addressed concerns raised by former Denel Land Systems (DLS) CEO Stephan Burger, who complained about the interviews he (Sadik) did with eNCA and SABC.
Burger said Sadik had told the two channels that Denel was bringing civil and criminal charges against the people named in the reports.
But Burger said he viewed these accusations as libelous and part of a popular and irresponsible narrative that Denel was involved in the state capture project.
He said he was the only person named by Sadik in one of the interviews and that former Denel CEO Riaz Saloojee was not named.
In his response, Sadik said: “It is really very unfortunate, really sad to hear these points being made by a senior executive of the company.”
He said there was a blatant disregard not only for company policies, but also for the broader legislative environment at Denel.
When you are in a leadership position, you must take responsibility. The capture of the state made a significant contribution to the problems we face, ”said Sadik.
He said that the creation of Denel Asia, in which the entity partnered with VR Laser, was illegal as its partner had no experience in Asia, particularly in the Indian market.
Meanwhile, Cosatu’s affiliate, the Liberated Metalworkers Union of SA (Limusa), on Thursday condemned DLS’s decision to fire 179 of its 438 employees and demanded that current and former executives implicated in the state capture confront to music after the evidence presented in commission.
“We are also calling on law enforcement agencies to act on the ongoing disclosures in the Zondo commission with the intention of recovering the millions of rands and ultimately arresting the perpetrators,” the union said in a statement.
Political Bureau
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