The State Capture Commission of Inquiry report also delved into shenanigans at the state airline, SAA in a contract involving Swissport.
The report unpack roles allegedly played by then board chairperson and former board member Yakhe Kwinana in ensuring that the ground-handling contract was given to Swissport which would have been liquidates had it lost SAA’s business.
The report also touches on how the SAA top brass including Kwinana had insisted that SAA would award the ground handling contract with a 30% share for BEE SMMEs set aside and would even choose the empowerment partner for Swissport.
An entity called “Jamicron” was hand-picked by SAA as a BEE as a partner but Swissport ultimately never partnered with Jamicron, but ended up partnering with JM Aviation which had Swissport shareholder Vuyisile Ndzeku as its director.
“The 30% set aside policy was said to be aimed at promoting transformation and to give business to Black-owned companies,” the report stated.
It also unpacked how in December 2015, Lester Peter from Global Supply Management at SAA had sent Swissport SA a draft contract including the 30% set aside.
Swissport had responded that this was likely an illegal agreement and would not genuinely help with transformation, the report stated.
However on February 2016 Peter Kohl, Swissport's director of ground and cargo handling, Ndzeku and a number of other Swissport representatives met with Kwinana and other officials from SAA.
Swissport initially refused to sign the agreement with SAA imposing a BEE partner on them, however a month later the two parties ended up concluding a contract which had a clause that Swissport would subcontract some of the work to BEE companies.
“In terms of the agreement, SAA would select a BEE partner that Swissport had to work with. It chose JM Aviation South Africa (Pty) Ltd (JM Aviation);” the report stated.
JM Aviation would purchase some ground power units and sell them on to Swissport, according to the report.
“Ndzeku testified that at some point in 2016, he was told by Mr Kohl that Swissport was going to pay JM Aviation R28.5m. Despite being a director of JM Aviation, he professed to know nothing about any contract in terms of which this payment from Swissport was to be made to JM Aviation,” the report stated.
“The Commission’s investigations revealed that this payment of R28.5m was made to JM Aviation in March 2016, the month before the ground handling contract between SAA and Swissport was finally concluded,” stated the report.
Swissport ended up paying JM Aviation which in turn paid Jamicron which paid a law-firm that had been handling a disciplinary case involving an SAA official who was opposed to the awarding of the contract to Swissport.
Some of the money paid to the law firm allegedly ended up in Peter's pockets who bought two luxury cars the very next day.
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