ANC's Oilgate: Imvume oil company = ANC = SA Government ?

Where would we be without the Mail & Guardian? Stefaans Brümmer et al undertake to lay bare the intricate details of an ANC corruption scam which threatens to eclipse even the arms deal affair. They allege that the ANC received R11-million in tax payers money illicitly via the oil parastatal PetroSA for campaign financing months before the 2004 election. The paper actually publishes the full forensic evidence on their website here.

In summary:

• On the day Mbeki announced formation of PetroSA in 2003 as the parastatal national oil company, it signed a contract with Imvume, a BEE oil company. Imvume was to supply PetroSA regularly with condensate which it in turn sourced from Swiss company Glencore (Condensate is a feedstock for PetroSA’s Mossel Bay gas-to-liquid fuels plant). The arrangement was that PetroSA pays Imvume for the condensate, which then pays Glencore.
• The clincher: in Dec 2003 Imvume asked for a special advance payment of R15 million from PetroSA into a different account than usual for a condensate shipment. Days later it wrote cheques to a total of R11 million to the ANC, four months before the general election.
  
• During this time the ANC's overdraft was typically running at around R100-million.
• When Imvume was unable to pay Glencore because it had diverted the funds to the ANC, PetroSA had to pay the money AGAIN, this time to Glencore directly. This is tax payers' money.
  
• PetroSA have yet to recover these funds from Imvume. A black hole remains on its balance sheet.
  
• Neither the ANC nor Imvume dispute these payments of R11 million. They claim it is a private matter between them.
• When PetroSA took Imvume to court, they used an ex-Imvume lawyer, suggesting that it was more of a PR exercise than a properly hostile law suit. They withdrew the case before getting anything back from Imvume.
• "PetroSA maintains that the special circumstances of the empowerment environment largely excuse the actions of its management." Scary.
  
• The ANC are stonewalling on the entire issue, claiming they have no obligation to discuss party funding matters.

Other background:

• Imvume's boss is the ANC secretary-general's "economic adviser".
• Imvume received generous oil allocations from Iraq between 2000 and 2002 after travelling there with top ANC officials. While I am no apologist for the illegal Iraq war at all, this undermines the ANC's moral opposition to US warmongering, akin to France's position which was similarly tainted by contracts between Total Elfina and the Hussein regime.

Here's to hope that the media and opposition in SA will pounce on this opportunity to hold the government to account. The best thing that could come from this is legislation to disclose party funding explicitly.

Also see the M&G's editorial.