Johannesburg – The Zondo commission into state capture has revealed that former public enterprise minister Lynne Brown lied under oath when she appeared before the inquiry last year.
In the second part of the report, the commission found that Brown lied about her knowledge of calls she had with Gupta lieutenant Salim Essa and the Gupta brothers.
“The assertion by Brown that she cannot remember anything about the conversations is rejected. She has told a deliberate untruth in this regard,” Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo said in the report.
“Why would she lie about her telephone conversations with [Gupta lieutenant Salim] Essa?” questioned Zondo.
“The only possible conclusion is that Brown was a witting participant in the Guptas’ schemes to capture Denel and Eskom,” read the report.
This emanates from last year in April, where Brown took a witness stand at the judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture to give Denel-related evidence.
Brown, who served the portfolio at that time as the minister under former president Jacob Zuma, presided over the systematic capture of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) by the Gupta family, Zondo concluded.
It was under her wing that major SOEs such as Eskom SAA and Denel went bankrupt.
When she appeared before the commission, Brown vowed to come clean and to clear her name, and furthermore to assist the commission to separate truth from fiction.
However, this resulted in a bittersweet taste, as Zondo ruled in his report that Brown, was not telling the truth.
“There is a lot from how Brown dealt with certain matters relating to SOEs that indicates that she was assisting the Guptas,” Zondo said in a report.
“The commission also obtained cellphone records relating to her, Salim Essa and Tony Gupta, which the report shows that Brown had telephonic conversations with another alleged Gupta lieutenant, Nazeem Howa, as well as with Atul Gupta around March 2015,” the report stated.
In the report, Zondo said conversations happened a day after the suspension of four Eskom executives.
“The evidence of Brown before the commission was unequivocal: she said that she did not know Salim Essa and had never spoken to him.
“However, the records show that she had a total of eight telephone conversations with the user of Essa’s cellphone, and therefore Essa, at a total duration of 1,398 seconds, that is more than 23 minutes. Each of these calls was probably initiated by Essa,” read the report.
In what came as a shock in the findings of the Zondo commission, it is further revealed that Brown played a distinctive role in state capture state arms manufacturer, Denel, by deploying certain individuals in the board as per the order of the Guptas.
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