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SEC AVERTS COLLAPSE IN GOVT JSW, PROPOSAL

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MBABANE – After months of investigations, the Times SUNDAY today reveals that government, much against advice, signed agreements with JSW Energy Ltd that allegedly had the potential of causing SEC to collapse.

SEC is an acronym for the kingdom’s only electricity power provider, Swaziland Eletricity Company. JSW Energy, which is owned by Indian billionaire businessman Sajjan Jindal, intended to develop a proposed 3 000 megawatts coal-fired power plant from which SEC was to purchase power for distribution countrywide. Highly confidential documents show that government signed two agreements with JSW Energy despite being warned against entering into these deals because they put SEC at a huge disadvantage. The two agreements were a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and a Project Development Agreement (PDA). Prime Minister Sibusiso Barnabas Dlamini appeared to have endorsed the deals with JSW as he led a high-powered delegation of Cabinet ministers to India to tour the company’s plant between April 13 and 14, 2016.

The PM’s team included Prince Hlangusemphi Dlamini-Minister of Economic Planning and Development, Moses Malindane Vilakati-Minister of Agriculture, Jabulile Mashwama-Minister of Natural Resources and Energy, Sibusisiwe Mngomezulu- the then Acting High Commissioner of Swaziland. The Eswatini delegation was pictured touring the plant in the company of Vinod Nowal - Deputy Managing Director of JSW Steel, and Mr. Sanjay Sagar, the Joint Managing Director of JSW Energy.

Indians buy stake in Ashraf’s company

Indonesian Consular and businessman Kareem Ashraf was also fully involved in this deal and he even was part of the PM’s delegation that visited the JSW plant. The involvement of Consular Ashraf in the thick of things was through a company called Minerals and Energy Swaziland Pty Ltd, in which he is a director. JSW had acquired a 51 per cent stake in Ashraf’s company, which has already been granted a licence to prospect for coal in the country. This was confirmed by Commissioner of Mines Sam Ntshalintshali in December last year in the midst of investigations into the JSW project. “The Office of the Commissioner of Mines received and processed a prospecting licence application for coal at Lubhuku coal field for the mentioned company,” he said when  asked what he knew about Minerals and Energy Swaziland Pty Ltd. According the JSW director’s report for 2016/2017 financial year, the company, after acquiring the 51 per cent stake in Minerals and Energy Swaziland, extended the latter, as of March 31, 2017, a loan of Rs.2.59 crore (which is about E4.8 million in today’s exchange rate).


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