A former top executive of Trillian Capital Partners on Tuesday confirmed that the company did work for Eskom to the tune of R600-million without any formal contract with the power utility after earning R93-million from Transnet for no services rendered.
Mosilo Mothep’s testimony before Parliament’s inquiry into State capture painted a picture of how the company, which is linked to the Gupta family, was placed in pole position for contracts with State-owned companies.
Its closeness to government was such that while working at the company, she received advance warning of the firing of first Nhlanhla Nene and then Pravin Gordhan as finance minister.
She said she learnt that Nene would be replaced six weeks before it happened.
On the day she was informed, Trillian CEO Eric Wood emailed her a document outlining “the new initiatives the minister was going to approve and the fees we could earn”.
Mothepu went on to say that she had heard, though she did not have confirmation of this, that Wood had used his knowledge of Nene’s impending sacking to speculate on the rand and make millions.
“I am told Eric Wood and his people traded on the pre-knowledge of Nenegate so he bought dollars in November and when our investments and the rand was crashing he reversed the trade and made hundreds of millions of rand,” she said, drawing gasps from MPs.