An Eskom forensic auditor who accused her boss of hiring hitmen to kill her says the national power producer has given her the bird by lifting his suspension despite the damning allegations against him.
Sunday World has been reliably informed that Eskom last month recalled Dorothy Mmushi’s ex-boss and head of forensics, Chris Baloye, from suspension after spending about 10 months at home.
Eskom suspended Baloye for unlawfully suspending Mmushi while he was working in the same department last year.
“It’s telling me that I have been given the middle finger. It shows a total lack of disregard for unethical conduct at Eskom, and corruption is allowed to thrive. It’s simply shocking that he has been brought back.
“Have all the allegations against him been tested and verified? Eskom must put this on record,” said Mmushi in an interview this week.
She said she found it disappointing that “the man has gone back to work when there hasn’t been closure on the allegations against him that he was involved in planning my assassination. “If he has been cleared, okay, then. Let them go on record saying that they exhausted all avenues to make sure that he wasn’t involved.
“Moreover, despite the fact that he allegedly ordered a hit against me, he unlawfully suspended me.
What has Eskom got to say about that? So, how does someone with a heavy, dark cloud go back to the very same environment? For me, that’s shocking,” said Mmushi.
An alleged hitman contacted Mmushi in July last year, telling her that her boss had offered him R400 000 to kill her.
In a recorded telephone conversation that Mmushi said she handed to law enforcement authorities – together with other evidence she collected – the hitman could be heard alleging that it was her boss who had initiated the assassination and had already paid him R50 000.
The alleged hitman supplied her with surveillance footage, photographs and detailed information about where she lives, her place of work, and the registration numbers of various vehicles she owned.
Mmushi maintains that she believes the senior executive, whom she says she directly reported to, has the motive to have her killed because of the corruption investigations she conducted at Eskom, which revealed collusion between certain suppliers and senior managers at the power utility.
Mmushi’s investigations as a manager in Eskom’s forensics department specifically focused on corruption and fraud in low purchase order transactions and informal tendering, where suppliers might conspire to win purchase orders from the power utility for work worth just under R1-million.
“What happened during the course of my investigations is that I identified a link between certain companies and the buyer who was assisting these individuals,” she said.
“It was during the course of this investigation that I picked up that even the Hawks were in on this. I was unlawfully arrested on fabricated allegations by one of the suppliers, and the Hawks just came to arrest me based on a fictitious statement from a supplier.”
In its response, Eskom said an investigation into Mmushi’s allegations against the senior official was still underway.
“Eskom can confirm that an investigation into allegations made by Ms Mmushi against Mr Baloye was outsourced to an external service provider,” Eskom wrote.
The national power producer’s media desk, however, declined to give full details regarding the senior official’s return to work; neither would the utility disclose whether a disciplinary inquiry was held or what the outcomes were, if any.
“Eskom does not disclose information that is private and confidential about its employees to third parties without the necessary consent from the affected employees,” the power utility wrote.
Mmushi said she was still living in fear for her life, knowing that the people who allegedly tried to kill her were “still living their normal lives”.
“I will continue to seek justice, no matter how long it takes. I also still want to advise the powers that be to institute a commission of inquiry into the past four years of Eskom’s procurement if they truly want to take the organisation forward because the same rotten apples, we found in our investigations are still stealing from the coffers of the taxpayer,” she said The Hawks had not commented by the time of going to press.
