Pretoria - Minister of Public Enterprise Pravin Gordhan and his senior officials have been accused of sabotaging the SA Express business rescue practitioners, making it impossible to turn things around and prevent the liquidation that cost scores of employees their jobs.
The report shows that the BRP’s biggest struggle was trying to receive post-commencement funding, needed in a business rescue process to successfully restructure a company. These funds can be used to pay creditors, insurers and salaries. However, he said that was now water under the bridge, because they had made the application for liquidation last year, which had not been opposed by the department. The airline was subsequently placed under provisional liquidation, which was being handled by liquidators, which were facilitating the sale of the company.
Mkhonto and Terblanche added that the department attempted to lobby creditors to vote against the ratification of their appointment at the first meeting of creditors, but was not successful. “All the independent creditors voted in favour of the ratification of our appointment, but despite this, the department did nothing to facilitate our role in resuscitating the airline.”
Hlubi-Majola said, in fact, the workers and union had questions about SA Express and some of the people who had been chosen to purchase the airline. “The department has a duty to explain to the public exactly what criteria was used to find the people who are going to take over from SA Express and purchase the airline. They must explain whether these people, from the beginning, had the means to pay for the airline and also hire staff.”
* They engaged with some of South Africa's commercial banks and other Development Finance institutions in an effort to secure Post-Commitment Funding. One of South Africa's commercial banks indicated that it might consider advancing Post-Commitment Funding, but only on receipt of a government guarantee.
* This was done in order to give the government - either through the department or the National Treasury, an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to the entire business rescue process and to provide assurances and guarantees to the lessors of the aircraft that their Post-Commitment Funding claims would be paid as part of the business rescue process.