Exclusive: Transnet State Capture Big Four face 32 charges of corruption, fraud and of being delinquent directors
Fourteen years ago, there was no stopping the Transnet Big Four executives – CEO Brian Molefe, his CFO Anoj Singh, the head of freight rail Siyabonga Gama and chief engineer Thamsanqa Jiyane.
As the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture heard, the four were all powerful mandarins of the state corporation. They did not defer to the board, nor Transnet's treasury, nor to its bid adjudication committees, as they rushed through a locomotive acquisition that would ultimately cost South Africa billions of rands in inflated costs and multiple times more in lost opportunities as rail went to the wall.
Now the four face 32 charges contained in a charge sheet brought against them by the Independent Directorate Against Corruption (Idac) as it gets to grips with prosecuting the State Capture cases at the rail utility. The charge sheet reveals that the Idac has alleged fraud, corruption and violations of the Public Finance Management Act and the Companies Act against the four, with a trial set to begin in October.
Arrested this week, all four are out on bail of R50,000 each and have surrendered their passports. All four pleaded poverty and said they could not afford the original bail request of R200,000 each when they appeared in the Palm Ridge Court on Monday, 30 June. Two, Molefe and Gama, are MPs in former President Jacob Zuma's MK party.
The charges brought under a quartet of laws seek to prosecute them from four angles, including dereliction of corporate and constitutional duty (charges under the Public Finance Management Act and the Companies Act) as well as fraud and corruption under the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act (Precca).
Here are the numbers of charges each faces, comprising variations of contraventions of the four laws.
Anoj Singh (13); Molefe (10); Gama (6); and Jiyane (3). The four are accused of acting in concert (using a common purpose prosecution) to defraud Transnet and are alleged to have benefited through bribes detailed in the charge sheet and also ventilated in hearings at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.
It all started in 2011, two years after President Jacob Zuma took office, as State Capture extended its claws into the parastatals Eskom, Transnet and Denel.
Also involved were their SA acolytes, the businessmen Salim Essa and Iqbal Meer (who chaired Transnet's acquisitions board committee), and the Gupta family that later installed Molefe as CEO and had Singh and Gama in their pockets, the State Capture inquiry heard.
The criminal charges against the four traverse the same ground as the Commission, but it has taken time to formulate the package of charges each now faces.
Rolling stock bonanza
In 2011, Transnet decided to boost rail freight demand by re-kitting its rolling stock. Over the next four years, the four allegedly conspired to favour the Chinese Rail Corporation (CRC), which was then divided into the China South Rail and China North Rail divisions. Essa earned handsome commissions for putting together this deal, the commission heard.
Molefe, for example, was found by the commission to have ensured that the company did not have to meet the BEE conditions required of other suppliers. The Transnet whistle-blower, Francis Callard, detailed to the State Capture commission how the Japanese supplier, Mitsui, was elbowed aside in a series of corporate manoeuvres, and he was often kept in the dark.
In 2014, Molefe and Singh signed off on contracts without board or government approval, and soon the costs ballooned from an initial R38.6-billion to R54.5-billion.
The charge sheet details how, in each tranche of the three-phase transaction, payments exceeded agreed costs by almost R20-billion. The charge sheet details these as follows: in the first 95 locomotive transactions, a payment of R3.4-billion overshot the approved contract value by R231-million. In the 100-locomotive transaction, a payment of R5.18-billion exceeded the approved value by R348-million.
In the big-ticket purchase of 1,064 locomotives, Transnet suffered a prejudice (loss) of R18.7-billion. Transnet is also alleged to have lost an additional R368-million in a botched relocation of an assembly line to Durban.
Transnet is being steadily repaired by a combination of a new executive team led by CEO Michelle Philips, the Operation Vula team in the Presidency, and the secondment of seasoned rail and logistics executives from business through the B4SA partnership.
However, it remains hobbled because many of the trains at the centre of the State Capture case are not operational, resulting in rail volumes that are significantly lower than they should be to transport the freight company to its desired destination.
Between 2012 and 2015, the four are alleged to have benefited from cash and benefits from the Gupta family, including trips to Dubai and cash payments from Saxonwold. The family's mansion complex (3, 5, and 7 Saxonwold Drive) is being auctioned through Park Village Auctions on 24 July.
Molefe, Singh, and Gama were also arrested in August 2022 in connection with a R93-million payment to Trillian Capital (a Gupta company run by the flamboyant businessman Eric Wood) for one of the locomotive transactions.
That case is scheduled to come to court in February 2026, while the proceedings against the Big Four have been postponed to October 2025. DM
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