The authenticity of the email that the state used as a smoking gun to charge former Eskom executive Matshela Koko in a corrupt multibillion-rand deal is being brought into question after it emerged that two conflicting versions exist.
The NPA is now running around like a headless chicken trying to verify the email’s authenticity, something that it should have done before inculpating Koko.
At the centre of the email’s questionable credibility is the presence of the word “yesterday”, which appears in the first version of emails exchanges on April 7, 2014 between ABB executive Markus Bruegmann and Thabo Mokwena, a businessman linked to Koko.
However in the other version, the word “yesterday” is missing, suggesting that the original email was doctored or that the other one is fake.
The NPA relied on this communication to allege that Koko orchestrated a 2014 meeting at Montecasino to pressure ABB into awarding a subcontract for Eskom’s Kusile project to Mokwena’s company, Leago.
However, Koko’s legal team exposed critical discrepancies: one email version includes the phrase “the opportunity to meet yesterday”, while the other omits “yesterday”, radically altering its meaning.
The inclusion of “yesterday” implies the meeting occurred on April 6, 2014 – a timeline pivotal to the NPA’s claim that Koko leaked Eskom’s R2.2-billion budget for Kusile to ABB during that encounter.
The version without the word suggests the meeting had not yet happened or occurred on a different date, undermining the prosecution’s narrative.
The startling information is contained in the supplementary mutual legal assistance memo dispatched to Swiss authorities, where ABB is headquartered, by NPA’s Independent Directorate’s Advocate Andrea Johnson.
She wrote, “In order to rebut the allegation that NPA and ABB altered and/or manipulated evidence, the emails in a native format must be obtained, which will give access to the metadata and the original email that was forwarded,” Johnson wrote to Swiss authorities.
“In anticipation of future and further allegations and the necessity to have access to provided communication in native format, we request that all previously provided communication be provided in native format.”
However, Johnson’s plea to Swiss authorities to get ABB to provide information to settle the question of which email is legitimate appears unlikely to yield the intended results.
This is because in another court dispute between Koko, Eskom, SIU, and ABB, the engineering giant insists that it does not know which email is fake and which one is real.
Thus the credibility of ABB – a state witness that signed a R2.5-billion plea deal with the NPA – has also collapsed.
In court filings, ABB said, “One does not know which of the two versions is correct [and] one does not know why there is a difference between them or what the cause of the difference is. More importantly, the email (whichever version of it one reads) indicates that by 6 April 2014, Leago was in contact with ABB regarding a subcontractor role. The evidence is that from February 2014 to April 2014, Mr Koko was in regular telephonic contact with Mr Mokwena of Leago.”
Worse, NPA star witness Gotz-Dietrich Wolff said under oath that investigators themselves provided him the “yesterday” version of the email.
Koko’s legal team argues the doctored email was crafted to retroactively align with ABB’s “statement of fact”, which claims Koko strong-armed ABB into considering Leago as a subcontractor. Yet, Leago never secured the contract, and Mokwena denies pursuing it. In the statement of facts before court, the NPA claimed such a meeting happened.
“Bruegmann met with Koko and Mokwena at Montecasino, Fourways. At this meeting, Koko introduced Bruegmann to Mokwena, describing Mokwena as his ‘friend’ and stating that Mokwena’s company, Leago, was a company that would be ‘interesting’ for ABB to work with in South Africa,” it reads. “At the same meeting, Koko showed Bruegmann an internal Eskom document providing for Eskom’s budget of R2.2-billion for the Kusile C&I contract. Following the meeting of April 6, 2014, Bruegmann asked Wolff and another ABB employee to investigate Leago as an ABB channel partner including its ‘political network’.
“Mokwena and Leago were, however, not interested in becoming a channel partner for the Kusile C&I contract.”
The NPA’s failure to resolve the dispute – over a year after the case was dismissed – fuels accusations of evidence tampering to secure a conviction.
Koko has previously submitted to court that establishing the authenticity of either of the emails was crucial as the whole case hinges on it.
Johnson’s spokesperson Henry Mathomane said the NPA denies allegations of evidence tampering but will leave the debate to a court of law to settle. “It is for the courts to decide on the fairness of the proceedings and the validity of evidence, including emails.”
Koko was charged with fraud, corruption and money-laundering amid much fanfare with 15 others including his wife and two stepdaughters in October 2022. Koko was accused of masterminding the awarding of the R2.2-billion contract to ABB to do work in Kusile Power Station in exchange of lining up companies linked to his family members and friends to subcontract.
However, following “unreasonable delays” by the NPA to get the trial off the blocks, the case was struck off the roll at the Middleburg Commercial Crimes Court. Following that development, the NPA, in an attempt to save face for fumbling what was supposed to be their biggest fish caught in state capture cases, has insisted that it was working to re-enroll the case and charge Koko again.
