BDFM Online
Thursday, November 16, 2006
THE Democratic Alliance (DA) yesterday said its preliminary analysis of documents it received from PetroSA indicated that the state oil company might have failed to fully comply with a Cape High Court order to provide it with all the relevant documentation
"A preliminary analysis of the documents provided suggests that PetroSA has not fully complied with the court order and has failed to provide all the relevant documentation," DA spokesman Hendrik Schmidt said.
The DA had requested "all recorded information and documentation relating to the transaction and contracts between PetroSA, Imvume Management and Glencore International".
However, a number of the documents handed over made reference to correspondence and documents which appeared not to have been included in the documentation handed to the DA, he said.
The DA was in the process of confirming this, he said.
"Once we have compiled a comprehensive archive of all the documents - both those handed over and other documents referred to in the information provided to the DA - we will make our findings known."
If PetroSA had indeed failed to comply and withheld information from the DA - and in turn from public scrutiny - the DA would take the matter forward, as PetroSA would be in violation of a court order, Schmidt said.
Both the DA and Freedom Front Plus (FF+) posted on their websites documents related to the scandal. FF+ spokesman Willie Spies said the documents handed to the DA by PetroSA were now in the public domain, making it possible for the FF+ to also make documents in its possession available to the public.
The documents published by the FF+ on its website include an apparently bogus invoice of Imvume Management issued to PetroSA for an advance payment for "314598,06 barrels of crude oil" for R15m, dated December 18 2003.
Imvume did not use the money to pay a creditor, Glencore International, for the crude oil condensate, donating R11m to the African National Congress for its election fund instead.
Spies said the FF+ was also concerned that black economic empowerment was increasingly being used by the ANC as "a cloak for corruption and self-enrichment", following recent media reports on suspicions that Imvume was "nothing other than an ANC front company". Sapa