An expert witness from Quintessence Digital Forensics, Cecil Louwrens, has told the State Capture Commission that a digital forensic assessment of the meta data of an email and four MS word documents has show the origin of the suspension letters of four Eskom executives in 2015.
They had apparently been forwarded from former Eskom board chairperson Zethembe Khoza’s email to the power utility’s former board member, Venete Klein.
“The email was from an email address called Zethembe Khoza, which is then the same email address as the previous one, Khozazw@Eskom.co.za. And then we’ve got four word documents attached, the little W in the blue box is very small but you can make it out. It means it’s a word document, and the document the first one is called pre-suspension bm..docx,” Louwrens said.
Other witnesses, including former Eskom chairperson Zola Tsotsi have told the commission in the past that the instruction to conduct an inquiry at Eskom and suspend three executives – at the time – came directly from former president Jacob Zuma.
During her appearance before the commission in Johannesburg, Klein did not dispute commission chairperson Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo’s observation that external parties appeared to have been controlling the Eskom board of 2015.
Today’s proceedings of the commission are in the video below:
