The lead investigating officer in the R2.2-billion Kusile corruption case involving former Eskom executive Matshela Koko, has begged the Middleburg Specialised Commercial Crimes Court in Mpumalanga not to strike the matter off the roll.

The officer, who cannot be named in terms of a court order, appeared for a hearing the court requested to establish whether the State was ready to proceed with the trial and whether there were any unreasonable delays.

Magistrate Stanley Jacobs asked that the investigating officer appear before him to clarify certain issues in his affidavit.

Jacobs noted that the evidence the State had collected was voluminous and asked if the investigating team had gone through all the documents.

"With the limited understanding of a terabyte, the court's understanding is that one terabyte equals 83-million pages of information. So, with the 16 terabytes that you say you seized, can you give an indication of how many pages are involved? I want to have a mental understanding of the volume of evidence you had to go through," Jacobs asked.

The officer responded that he had no idea how many pages were involved, but said there were millions and confirmed that they had gone through all the evidence.

He also told the court that witness consultations that were supposed to be held in the United States of America in September had been completed but added that the affidavits and statements were still outstanding.

"[The] affidavits are on the way. Only a portion of the statements have been compiled. We don't have any physical affidavits; we are still waiting for them," the officer said.

Former Eskom boss Matshela Koko sits in the dock of the Middelburg Magistrate's Court on 27 October 2022.

In addition, a Bowman's report on the flow of funds had been finalised but still needed to be in the docket.

In his affidavit, the investigating officer pointed out that there would be serious consequences for the State if the matter were struck from the court roll.

However, Jacobs told him striking off a matter didn't mean the case was dismissed.

The magistrate told him:

... it simply says, your house is not in order, go fix your house and come back to court when ready.

The investigating officer said the State would be ready to prepare an indictment and that the matter could go to the High Court.

Koko and his co-accused, including his wife, Mosima Koko, her daughters, Koketso Aren and Thato Choma, ex-SA Local Government Association chief executive Thabo Mokwena, lawyer Johannes Coetzee, Watson Seswai, senior Eskom project director Hlupheka Sithole, Sunil Vip, Markus Bruegmann, Gopal Kambi, Lesetsa Mutchinya and companies linked to some of the accused were charged in October last year.

The case has been marred by several postponements, which led to the hearing.