Mobile telecommunications company has denied that it owes Please Call Me inventor Nkosana Makate more than R63bn.
In court papers before the high court in Pretoria, former Vodacom accountant Teboho Motaung alleged in an affidavit that Vodacom had set aside R63.4bn for Makate and had even processed invoices bearing his name while the matter was before the Constitutional Court.
In a statement issued on Friday, Vodacom stated that it "rejects as– false and deliberately misleading the claims by Mr Kenneth Makate and Mr Teboho Motaung that Vodacom purportedly provided for a sum of R63 billion as cover for its potential liability for the Please Call Me product".
"Vodacom did not make a provision for the R63 billion or for that matter, any other sum of money, during this period, because the Constitutional Court did not set the quantum of the amount of money payable to Mr Makate, but directed the parties to negotiate in good faith to agree a reasonable amount of compensation payable to Mr Makate," the statement stated.
Makate had approached the courts in an effort to force Vodacom to make available copies of contracts of value added services with other service providers that have rendered revenue generating services for the company.
Vodacom has already stated in court that it did not have some of the documents which were ordered by the North Gauteng High Court to be produced for Makate. Makate had initially told Sowetan that he didn't believe that Vodacom didn't have any of those contracts it could provide.
He is also asking the court to set aside Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub's compensation offer of R47m which he rejected in January last year.
Vodacom stated that it believed that Makate's supplementary affidavit, which contains allegations that Vodacom had set aside R63.4bn for him, to be "premature because the North Gauteng High Court still has to rule on Vodacom’s application for the variation of the court order that it sought to grant to Mr Makate to have access to certain documentation".
"As the matter is before the courts, Vodacom is not in a position to debate the merits of Mr Makate’s application to have reviewed and set aside Mr Joosub's determination on the amount of reasonable compensation payable to Mr Makate," Vodacom's statement stated. .
Makate said: "Their statement is riddled with falsifications and I will formally respond to each and every falsity contained therein."
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