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JOHANNESBURG, May 9 (Reuters) - South African police said on Tuesday that former Eskom chief executive officer Andre de Ruyter had not provided them with enough specifics to open criminal investigations into alleged corruption at the power utility.
De Ruyter left Eskom abruptly in February after giving an interview in which he said corruption was like a cancer that had spread throughout Eskom and suggested the governing African National Congress (ANC) was involved.
He did not provide detailed evidence for the claims in the interview but said the police response to information he had given them was disappointing.
On Tuesday, senior police officials told parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) that de Ruyter had two meetings with police about alleged corruption at Eskom, in June and July 2022.
At these meetings, “reference was made to criminal activity in general and matters related to Eskom was always, in our understanding, generic and more strategic in content”, said Lieutenant General Peter Jacobs.
“No specific information, however, was containing elements of a crime,” he added.
ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula has rubbished de Ruyter’s allegations against the governing party, labelling him a failure as CEO given the company is currently implementing the worst power cuts on record.
De Ruyter appeared before SCOPA last month and stood by his corruption claims, saying a previous estimate he gave that the utility was losing 1 billion rand ($55 million) a month from theft was conservative.
He told SCOPA his estimate was based on potential losses from theft of coal, fuel oil and infrastructure such as cables and overhead lines, among other things.
Police officials on Tuesday said they were investigating corruption at Eskom including fuel oil theft, illegal coal yards and dealing in illicit prepaid power vouchers.
They said they had made over 100 arrests for various forms of Eskom-related crime over a roughly 12-month period from April 2022, but they did not say whom they had arrested. Among items seized during investigations were power cables, batteries, coal trucks and fuel tankers.
Eskom has struggled to supply South Africa with enough power for over a decade, but last year saw a record number of days with electricity outages and this year there have been outages lasting up to 10 hours almost every day.
