ACSA cleans up its act but is Government interfering?
ACSA Background
The Airports Company South Africa SOC Ltd (ACSA) owns and manages nine major airports in South Africa. The South African Government (through the Department of Transport) is the majority shareholder, with a 74.6% shareholding. The balance is held by the Public Investment Corporation (20%), a group of empowerment investors (4.21%) and ACSA’s staff share scheme (1.19%). The empowerment investors consist of G10 Investment, African Harvest, Pybus Thirty Four Investments, Tele Investments and Upfront Investments.
Board action in relation to alleged fraud and corruption
ACSA has been in the news on and off since November 2016, on account of a variety of allegations relating to corruption and tender fraud. On 7 November 2016, the ACSA Board of Directors suspended three of its senior executives, following the alleged unlawful award of tenders. A decision was also taken at that Board meeting to suspend ACSA’s CEO, Bongani Maseko, but this decision was not implemented.
At the beginning of February 2017, the Board decided to extend the suspension of the executives and to charge them formally. Independent auditors and lawyers advised it in assessing the alleged offences and the appropriate sanctions. It was also decided to suspend Bongani Maseko, pending his alleged misconduct on a variety of counts. These include the unauthorised expenditure of R6.84 million in favour of Incentive Driven Marketing and R7 million to Paul Ranamane, for legal services. Ranamane Mokolane attorneys was not only not on ACSA’s approved panel of attorneys, but in addition, Paul Ranamane had been struck from the attorneys roll by the Law Society in October 2016 on grounds of, inter alia, the misappropriation of trust funds in an amount of R5 million. Payments from ACSA could not be made directly to him in the absence of a tax clearance and were routed through someone else. The charges against Bongani Maseko also include the authorisation of the unlawful eviction of Exclusive Books from its premises at ORT.