Molefe awaiting court date for pension payout appeal

Former Eskom CEO Brian Molefe is waiting for a court date to determine whether he will be granted leave to appeal against an order made in January that he must pay back about R11-million that he received as a pension payout.

Molefe was given 10 days in which to make the payment on January 25 and ordered to pay the legal costs of the Democratic Alliance‚ Economic Freedom Fighters and Solidarity.

The parties had applied to the High Court in Pretoria last year for an order to set aside the decision by Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown to appoint or reinstate Molefe as CEO after he had departed from Eskom on a purported early retirement package.

The DA also asked for an order that any payment of money to Molefe as part of the "retirement" package be set aside and that Molefe repay those amounts within 10 days of the order.

When the matter was heard last year‚ the Eskom pension fund had already paid R10.3m to Molefe.

Solidarity indicated to TimesLIVE on Thursday that it will oppose Molefe's application for leave to appeal against the decision by the Pretoria High Court in January.

"Brian Molefe applied for leave to appeal at the High Court in Pretoria and we are waiting for a court date for the leave to appeal. We are not sure when it will be heard but we hope it's within the next two to three weeks‚ but will definitely oppose his application for leave to appeal because we are convinced that no other court will come to another finding‚" said Solidarity chief executive Dirk Hermann.

"The judge also ruled that he must pay the cost of Solidarity and we are now in the process of taxation to determine the exact amount. Our expectation is that it will be around R1-million although that's not fixed. These legal fees are our legal costs at the court of first instance and will also include these appeal proceedings if he is not successful with that‚" Hermann told TimesLIVE.

Molefe resigned from Eskom in November 2016‚ claiming that he was acting in the interests of good governance after the release of the public protector’s report.

Hermann added that criminal charges against Molefe and former Eskom chairman Ben Ngubane had also been opened.

"The criminal charges focus on fraud which are misrepresentations which he made to the board of Eskom. But the problem here is that he didn’t act alone‚ he was in concert with other senior managers‚ especially the [former] chairperson Mr Ben Ngubane‚ so we laid criminal charges against them.

“The Hawks have already indicated that they will investigate that and we also have information that they are in the process of doing so because they have already started taking statements at Eskom. So we know this is serious‚" added Hermann.

Molefe's lawyer‚ Barry Farber‚ said his team is also still waiting for a court date for the leave to appeal application to be heard.