State-owned electricity utility Eskom has agreed to release a redacted version of a “final report” compiled by international legal firm Dentons in July 2015, following a board-initiated probe into the operational and financial underperformance of the organisation at the time.

However, the report would only be made available to those making a formal request under the framework of the Promotion of Access to Information Act, commonly referred to as a PAIA application. The four PAIA applications already received by Eskom, would be released in line with an “expedited process”.

Eskom and Dentons deny that the final report has been “sanitised”, but acknowledge that various presentations were made to the board audit and risk committee during the course of the investigation, which included “uncorroborated allegations” not included in the final report.

It has emerged that Eskom sought to destroy all copies of an earlier draft report, arguing that the untested allegations contained against certain individuals could open it up to legal suits. However, media reports, which seemingly quote aspects of that earlier document, are emerging.

The “fact finding” Dentons investigation was launched in the wake of the shock announcement, made by then Eskom chairperson Zola Tsotsi on March 12, 2015, that four senior executives (including then CEO Tshediso Matona, then FD Tsholofelo Molefe, then head of group capital Dan Marokane and then acting group executive for commercial and technology Matshela Koko) had been suspended to allow for an “unfettered” investigation. All the executives, except for Koko, who is currently interim CEO, subsequently left the organisation, despite being cleared of any wrongdoing.

Chairperson Dr Ben Ngubane said last week that the board did not agree to a Dentons recommendation that further investigations be undertaken to corroborate some of the serious allegations that had been raised during a series of interviews, some of which were conducted with “disaffected parties”. Instead, it made a “trade-off” decision to rather focus its efforts on implementing those recommendations that related to the operational and financial turnaround of the struggling utility.

Ngubane claimed that eight of the 13 recommendations had already been implemented and that the balance of the recommendations, which mostly related to security, would be implemented,

He credited the report with providing a framework for the board to oversee a turnaround at the utility, which, at the time was implementing almost daily load-shedding and spending billions on diesel to counteract the precipitous decline in coal-plant availability. Ngubane even revealed that Tsotsi and Matona had been forced to approach government on December 26, 2014, for help to pay staff and creditors.

However, the chairperson’s statement is at odds with one made recently by Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown, who described the Dentons report as “inadequate for usage within the company”.

Dentons managing partner in South Africa Noor Kapdi indicated the firm, which was paid some R20-million for its investigation, viewed the report as final and complete when assessed against its terms of reference and the client’s decision not to pursue some of the allegations raised.

“Is the report incomplete? In my view, the report is not incomplete. Is the investigation incomplete? In my view, by a long shot! [But] this is the client’s prerogative,” Kapdi said at a briefing in Johannesburg organised by the Eskom board.