Pityana commends McKinsey for “paying back the money”

9 July 2018

Sipho Pityana, president of Business Unity South Africa (BUSA), has commended McKinsey for paying back its fees from the controversial Eskom turnaround programme.

McKinsey has been in discussion with Eskom and the National Prosecuting Authority’s Asset Forfeiture Unit since the beginning of this year to agree on a transparent, legally appropriate process for returning the R1-billion it had been paid -- and confirmed on 6 July that this had finally been concluded.

“This is a commendable redemptive step,” Pityana said. “Multinationals that did business with the Guptas and their proxies, or which collaborated in state capture, still have a long way to go to clear their name. The McKinsey move is a step in the right direction.”

The NPA concluded earlier this year that the payments to McKinsey and its local business partner, Trillian, were illegal, involving crimes such as fraud, theft, corruption and money laundering.

“Trillian, which was McKinsey’s partner-in-crime and a Gupta proxy, must now immediately repay the R595-million it scammed from Eskom,” he said.

“It must cough up, in the same way that McKinsey has. We demand that it repay all these fees, and publicly apologise for its actions.”

“But Trillian is not alone,” Pityana said. “There are other multinationals and corporates that profited from the general sense of greed that marked the state capture project, and they should take a leaf out of McKinsey’s book.”

Pityana said South African business as a whole needed to do “more … much more” to deal with corruption in its ranks and called for increased commitment to the Business Integrity Pledge, which calls on business to “actively combat corrupt practices wherever we encounter them” and to “have zero tolerance for corruption in our midst”.

Statement issued by Chris Vick on behalf of BUSA, 9 July 2018