National Treasury has confirmed that it did not award contracts to any of the 24 companies affiliated with Anisha Gordhan, the daughter of Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan.

The revelations come on the back of claims by leadership of the EFF that Gordhan junior was a proxy for her father’s business and had “amassed more than R80 million” doing business with government.

Treasury was first asked to confirm whether it had awarded contracts to any companies linked to Anisha on November 21. Treasury investigated News24’s detailed query for two weeks and on Wednesday confirmed it had not awarded contracts to these companies between 2009 and 2018.

News24 previously scrutinised these claims and found they had no basis in fact. Anisha had served on the boards of several companies as a representative of Investec in a non-executive capacity.

She was employed in the equity division of Investec, which manages the firm’s investments, from 2007 to 2017.   

Investec and Gordhan have both denied that she ever received any payments for her positions at these companies.

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News24 asked Treasury to confirm whether it had awarded any contracts to the entities, linked to the younger Gordhan by company records, between January 1, 2009, and November 20, 2018, and provided a full list of all the companies and their registration numbers.

Gordhan was finance minister from May 11, 2009, to May 25, 2014, and again from December 14, 2015, to March 31, 2017.

Gordhan yet to respond to EFF

News24’s query mirrors that of Floyd Shivambu, the EFF chief whip and the party’s deputy president, who wrote to Gordhan on October 26 this year with a similar request.

Shivambu’s query was somewhat open-ended in that it asked for “a list of all contracts and/or tenders awarded by the departments and entities that report to the ministry to the companies listed in Annexure A (below) between 2009 and 2018”.

This implies that Gordhan was required to provide the information on tenders or contracts awarded by entities that fall under the public enterprises ministry, his current portfolio.

Shivambu’s list of companies, in which Anisha served as a director at varying stages between 2007 and 2017, is not the complete list of companies she was affiliated to.

Minister Gordhan has not responded to the letter.

The EFF also addressed parliamentary questions to all ministers. The party claimed to have received 11 responses confirming other companies Anisha was linked to, mainly IT firm Vox Telecommunications, and showing that these companies had received more than R80m in contracts from various departments.

News24 has seen six of the 11 responses to the EFF’s questions and determined that Vox has received contracts from a number of government departments totalling at least R50m.

Anisha also served as a non-executive director at Vox, and Minister Gordhan and Investec have denied that she received any benefit from Vox as a result of these companies being awarded government contracts.

Investec also holds a large stake in Vox, which necessitated Gordhan junior’s position as a non-executive on its board.

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