BnP charged over SAA deal

OUTA says it has laid charges against Daniel Mahlangu of BnP Capital.

Johannesburg - OUTA – previously the civil organisation fighting e-tolls and now a generalised grouping under the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse label – says it has laid charges against Daniel Mahlangu of BnP Capital.

This, it says in a Thursday statement, is part of its ongoing investigation and challenge of irregularities at South African Airways.

OUTA recently exposed an unlawful deal between SAA and BnP Capital, which stood to gain R256 million for securing a loan of R15 billion on behalf of SAA.

In its statement, OUTA says, following its legal challenge, SAA stopped the original transaction. However, chairman Dudu Myeni still wanted to pay BnP Capital a fee of R49.9 million for “costs incurred”, it says.

After an extensive investigation, OUTA on Thursday laid criminal charges against Mahlangu, BnP’s sole shareholder, at OR Tambo Airport.

It says it laid charges against Mahlangu on the following grounds:

* Failure to inform SAA that his company’s financial services board (FSB) licence had been suspended, despite knowing that this was part of the critical criteria for a successful tender.

* Having contact with a direct competitor prior to the bid and fraudulently failing to disclose this to SAA.

* Fraudulently misrepresenting that parties would serve on his project team when they had never even heard of BnP Capital.

* Fraudulently misrepresenting there were parties on his team with aviation experience when the other party was, in fact, a luxury motor vehicle salesman, not part of Mahlangu’s team and also unaware of the existence of BnP Capital.

* Fraudulently attempting to persuade SAA to pay a cancellation fee of R49.9 million as a result of costs incurred by the international financier responsible for sourcing the funding when in fact the international financier had not incurred or invoiced for any such costs.

IOL