City Press reports that the fate of the Optimum Coal Mine has, once again, been caught up in a tale of intrigue after Eskom and an alleged Gupta front company combined forces to scupper a funding plan for the mine.
The Optimum mine and its valuable coal export allocation entered into voluntarily business rescue in 2016. A R1 billion loan from a consortium led by the state-owned African Exploration Mining and Finance Corporation (AEMFC) has now been swept from the table and, instead, a new round of bidding to buy Optimum will take place in July. The funding, which would have seen Optimum restart production and pay workers their wages – owed since last year – will now be reduced to a smaller loan while the bidding process restarts. Affected parties were informed of this last week. The AEMFC cash injection had earlier been presented as more or less a done deal, and an “opportunity that Optimum can ill afford to miss” by the business rescue practitioners (BRPs). Yet, the BRPs have apparently been blindsided by Eskom and Bermuda-based Centaur Ventures’ new deal scrapping that finance. In court papers, the BRPs accused Centaur of being a Gupta front and aiding the Gupta family’s businesses in milking money out of Optimum. Approached for comment, AEMFC said it would participate in the new bidding process to buy Optimum. Meantime, the BRPs have faced about 50 court applications from “the Gupta family and their acolytes”.
- Read Dewald van Rensburg’s detailed original report on the above at City Press
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