For any citizen who has in one way or another suffered the impact of corruption and maladministration at our state-owned enterprises, watching the testimony of Anoj Singh at the Zondo commission last week would have been infuriating.
The former Transnet and Eskom CFO is arguably one of the most effective lieutenants of the state capture project.
Singh was instrumental in facilitating dodgy deals between Transnet, and later Eskom and Gupta-linked companies, which cost the state-owned entities vast amounts of money that unduly benefited the notorious family and its associates.
He denies the claims despite mounting evidence against him.
A disgraced accountant and altogether scoundrel, Singh’s personal finances at the time he ran Transnet’s purse were laid bare by the commission. Perhaps most staggering is that Singh never touched his salary from the entity for at least three years.
His living expenses, he told us, were paid through his other multiple bank accounts. The source of income to those accounts was questionable if not downright dubious.
Asked how these were funded, Singh mumbled that these were savings from previous earnings at Transnet. This, he claimed, was testament to the fact that he had a strict savings culture.
Of course, none of this explanation is plausible enough to debunk the accusations that he was being funded by the Gupta family to advance their business interests in Transnet and Eskom.
His former driver previously told the commission that Singh used to take cash from the Gupta compound to store at the Knox Vault.
This is the same man who would have us believe that not only did he not have dealings with Gupta associate Salim Essa, but that it was a coincidence that he travelled multiple times to Dubai, paid for by them and stayed at the same hotel as they did.
He claimed to have paid for those trips himself – conveniently in cash – and through electronic transfers, evidence of which he could not produce.
It is unclear how far the investigation into Singh is since the DA first laid a criminal charges against him back in 2017.
However, on the basis of the evidence in the public domain, it is reasonable for us to expect that Singh should be the next figure on whose door the Hawks should be knocking soon.
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