AMABHUNGANE: Eskom paid hundreds of millions for diesel that ‘didn’t exist’

Last month, a group of investigators turned up at the gates of Burgan Terminal, a massive fuel import and storage depot in Cape Town harbour.

They were looking for diesel: not to buy it, but to locate 39 million litres (currently worth R1-billion) that belongs to Eskom. But instead of welcoming them in, the security guards allegedly shut the gates.

For more than a year, the investigators, from forensic firm Itsamaya Holdings and Eskom’s own Group Investigations and Security Department, had been digging into allegations surrounding diesel contracts, potentially worth R21-billion, that Eskom signed in December 2024.

Eskom has been tight lipped about the investigation, but internal documents independently obtained by amaBhungane show that Eskom had recorded the 40 million litres diesel as “received” at Burgan Terminal in July last year and had made two payments to its supplier, Lanele Resources, of R360-million each.

These were Eskom assets, recorded in Eskom’s books. But did the diesel actually exist?

Three weeks ago, after questions from amaBhungane, Eskom issued a quiet Friday afternoon press release, saying: “Eskom… received an independent verification report confirming that there were no discrepancies between the diesel delivered or available to Eskom and the amounts paid.”

But amaBhungane’s own digging suggests that the R721-million that Eskom paid to Lanele in July last year probably bought nothing but thin air and a promise to deliver fuel at a later stage.

Both Eskom and Lanele refused to answer questions on the whereabouts of the 39 million litres of diesel, and for two weeks Eskom refused to even clarify what it meant when it said the fuel was “delivered or available”.

But Vitol – the Swiss commodities giant that part owns the Burgan Terminal – agreed to play open cards: Lanele had contracted Vitol’s local subsidiary, Vesquin Trading, to provide it with diesel for Eskom, it confirmed. A total of 38.8 million litres remained outstanding, but only five million litres were physically in the tanks at Burgan Terminal.

“Vesquin… will deliver the outstanding balance of diesel when it is required,” Vesquin director Harvey Foster told us. “Five million litres [of] their remaining balance will remain in-tank at Burgan earmarked for ultimate supply to Eskom…”

This disclosure is significant: Eskom recorded the diesel as “received” a year ago and paid R721-million for it. Now, it appears that, at best, Eskom had bought five million litres and had an IOU for the rest.

This wasn’t an isolated incident. Our investigation suggests that under the guise of fighting load shedding, Eskom released billions of rand in irregular prepayments to its new suppliers without guarantees.

In May, after receiving an interim report from investigators, Eskom announced that “Due to the suspicion of fraud and corruption, Eskom has reported this matter to the [Hawks].”

The investigators’ final report was due to be handed to Electricity and Energy minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa at the end of July. Instead, Eskom said that “due to the volume and complexity of the analysis required”, it would need another month to finalise the report.

According to a well-placed source, one reason for the delay has been the question over whether millions of litres of diesel had gone missing. 

Eskom refused to answer any of the 41 questions we put to it last month.

However, evidence that amaBhungane has pieced together from Eskom’s SAP accounting system, emissions records and load-shedding data provides a window into what investigators may have seen: undelivered diesel, more severe load shedding, and covert prepayments reminiscent of the State Capture era.

Running out of storage

The problem Eskom was trying to solve with the contracts it signed in December 2024 wasn’t just the supply of diesel, it was storage.

Ankerlig, the emergency power plant outside Cape Town, can store 16 million litres of diesel, enough to keep all nine units running for roughly two days. But if load shedding stretches from hours to days, Ankerlig can quickly run out of fuel. 

The idea behind the new R21-billion diesel contracts was to increase Ankerlig’s storage capacity by securing dedicated storage outside Eskom’s own facilities.

This meant that Eskom would “receive” diesel and pay for it, not when it arrived by truck at Ankerlig, but when it arrived at the suppliers’ storage tanks, which were scattered across Cape Town.

This was a risk: Eskom would record the diesel as “received” on its books, and could instruct the suppliers to deliver it to Eskom within 24 hours, but they wouldn’t actually set eyes on fuel until it was trucked to Ankerlig, which could be days, weeks or even months later.

And it’s here, predictably, where the system fell apart.

The contract begins

Eskom had started January 2025 with an oversupply of electricity and tanks full of diesel at Ankerlig’s Open Cycle Gas Turbines.

By 8 January, things weren’t looking so peachy: several units of the coal fleet had gone down, taking 3,000 MW off the grid, and the tank levels at Ankerlig were dropping.

Still, thanks to its new diesel suppliers, it supposedly had 15 million litres of fuel in storage tanks 55km away, ready to be delivered in less than 24 hours if Ankerlig needed to be fired up to avert load shedding.

But by 10 January, Eskom was in a panic. In a memo to the National Treasury, it said it had been forced to award an emergency R200-million contract to Astron Energy to get diesel delivered that day: “It is critical that fuel is supplied to Ankerlig in order to assist in alleviating the high risk of potential load shedding… the new suppliers are still getting ready to deliver… Astron is the only contractor in a position to deliver the diesel required in the shortest time period required.”

But where were the 15 million litres of diesel (worth R280-million) that were recorded as “received” in Eskom’s books and that were supposed to be sitting in storage tanks just waiting to be delivered?

Shades of State Capture

According to records, Eskom had “received” 10 million litres of diesel on 3 January 2025 from Severino Industries, one of the new suppliers. Three days later, Eskom had paid Severino R179.2-million. 

The fuel was assumed to be at the Burgan Terminal, 55km from Ankerlig, and in terms of the contract, Eskom had the right to demand it be delivered within 24 hours. Yet records suggest that Severino didn’t deliver a drop to Ankerlig until 11 January, even as the tanks ran low and Eskom scrambled to find fuel.

Both the tender and the contract had been clear that Eskom would only pay for diesel that had been delivered. But was this just a simple logistical issue or something more underhanded?

On 8 January 2025, Nutinox, another of the new suppliers, gave Eskom a delivery note saying that it had also delivered five million litres of fuel to the Burgan Terminal.

Nutinox hadn’t secured a dedicated storage tank, as the tender required, and the delivery note was a simple one-pager on a Nutinox letterhead, but for the management of Eskom’s peaking plants, this was good enough.

A senior manager signed that the goods had been “received”, and a week later, Eskom okayed a payment to Nutinox for R89.7-million.

Yet when Eskom was desperate for fuel on 10 January, Nutinox’s five million litres was nowhere to be seen. Instead, 10 days later, a new entry appeared on the SAP system, reversing the “goods received” entry as well as the payment.

Nine years earlier, in April 2016, Eskom officials had used a similar sleight of hand to prepay the Gupta-controlled Tegeta Exploration and Resources R659-million for coal that hadn’t been delivered.

As Eskom accountant, Snehal Nagar, told the Zondo Commission: “The system is set up where you order goods, when you receive the goods, you pay for it. In this case you almost – I want to call it fooling the system if that’s the right word to use… what you’re doing is you’re creating an order and you’re settling that order as if you’ve received the goods immediately to affect the prepayment.”

So, we wondered, did Severino and Nutinox’s diesel really exist when Eskom recorded it as “received” in its books in January 2025? Or had Eskom made unofficial Tegeta-style prepayments to its new suppliers?

We put these questions to Severino’s managing director Mziwoxolo Peter, but he missed several deadlines to provide a response.

Nutinox’s sole director and owner, Sibuyile Magingxa, declined to comment, saying: “The matters you have raised fall within the scope of an ongoing forensic investigation, and we will await its finalisation before making any further comment. We would encourage you to also await the outcome of the investigation to avoid prejudicing our organisation or creating a false narrative before the facts have been established.”

The country narrowly escaped load shedding on 10 January 2025, but it should have been a warning: Eskom was paying for diesel and recording it as “received” in its books, when evidence suggested that in some cases the diesel did not exist.

Prepaying for diesel

By the end of January 2025, one month into the new contract, Ankerlig was at breaking point. Several units at Eskom’s coal-fired power plants had broken down and most of Ankerlig’s turbines had been running flat out for five days.

Emissions records, published on the Eskom website, show that Ankerlig had burnt through 46 million litres of diesel (then worth R858-million) in one month, while internal records suggest that trucks had only been able to deliver 36 million litres. And only a fraction of that fuel had come from Eskom’s new diesel suppliers.

To keep the lights on, Ankerlig had largely emptied its own storage tanks, and information suggests that three of its five tanks were now down to their last 10%.

On 30 January, Eskom officials wrote an emergency memo, asking for permission to prepay Severino for three million litres of diesel.

Each unit at Ankerlig burns through 40,000 litres of diesel – one truckload – an hour. Three million litres of diesel would buy an extra nine hours of operating time.

Yet records suggest that both Severino and Lanele Resources still had partially full tanks. Eskom had already paid for this diesel – two million litres in Severino’s tank and four million in Lanele’s – yet wanted permission to prepay Severino for another three million litres.

According to the SAP system, Eskom had “received” five million litres from Lanele on 13 January and paid for it. But by 30 January, Lanele had seemingly delivered less than one million litres to Ankerlig.

When we interviewed Lanele CEO Lwazi Mtshali in April, he told us that his company had gone above and beyond to make sure Ankerlig was supplied with fuel: “We’ve had times when… by the time they’re telling you their demand they’re actually burning already. So, everything is happening at the same time – you are solving for product, you are getting it into tank and you’re already moving trucks to Ankerlig – all of this is happening pretty much within a space of 24 hours. Sometimes it’s even happening overnight.”

Why, we asked Mtshali now, had Lanele been so slow to deliver when the country was faced with load shedding?

Mtshali declined to answer any further questions, saying: “We also have no objection to amaBhungane discussing this contract and our performance directly with Eskom.”

Load shedding returns

On 31 January 2025, for the first time in just over 300 days, Eskom announced that it would have to impose load shedding, at stage 3.

“This is a potentially temporary setback,” Eskom CEO Dan Marokane said in a statement. “Load shedding is largely behind us due to the structural improvements in our generation fleet. However, over the past seven days, we have experienced several breakdowns that require extended repair times. This has necessitated the use of all our emergency reserves, which now need to be replenished.”

The following day – with load shedding still in place and Ankerlig’s tanks dangerously low – Eskom switched off Ankerlig entirely, taking 1,200 MW off the grid.

Eskom describes this as a strategic decision: “Weekends generally provide an opportunity to replenish emergency reserves such as diesel stocks at open cycle gas turbine stations… ensuring these resources are available to support the system during the following business week,” it told us in an email last month.

In the week leading up to 2025’s first bout of load shedding, the open cycle gas turbines had been running for up to eight hours a day. 

“As a result, diesel stocks… were depleted more rapidly than they could be replenished.”

But records suggest Eskom’s new diesel suppliers were also struggling to keep up with demand: when running hard, Ankerlig needs at least 100 trucks a day to keep its storage tanks full; records suggest that on average only 50 had arrived each day.

And worse was about to come.

Stage 6 load shedding

By Sunday 23 February, Eskom’s Megawatt Park boardroom was on a knife edge. Several units at the coal-fired power stations had gone down overnight and Eskom had been forced to implement stage 6 out of the blue.

As Bheki Nxumalo, the head of generation, warned, Eskom was now also running out of diesel at Ankerlig: “Chair… obviously we’re not happy,” Nxumalo said, addressing Monde Bala, the chairperson of Eskom’s Emergency Response Command Centre, the high-level body that Eskom convened when load shedding threatened to destabilise the grid.

The problem, Nxumalo explained, was that Eskom’s new diesel suppliers weren’t delivering diesel to Ankerlig fast enough: “Normally we should be able to get just over 100 trucks… these companies that we’ve got, they are just not… although [we] are putting them under pressure, but they are not cutting [it].”

The exchange is captured in minutes from the Emergency Response Command Centre’s board meeting, where Nxumalo is seemingly referred to by his clan name Zwide.

Records suggest that Eskom’s new suppliers had delivered, on average, 70 truckloads of diesel a day in the lead-up to stage 6 load shedding, well short of the 100 truckloads needed.

“These current contractors are just not performing at the levels that we want to see… It’s just too slow,” Nxumalo said.

Earlier that day, Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa had held a press conference to apologise to the nation: “We suffered the setback on the 1st of February after over 300 days of consecutive supply of electricity in an uninterrupted fashion. And again, now, we’re coming back to you where we have another bout of load shedding and now the intensity is much greater.

“The levels of agitation, the level of anger, the levels of disappointment are understood… we regret this setback in the same manner that we regretted the setback that was registered on the 1st of February,” he said.

When Marokane got up to speak, he had singled out the supply of diesel to Ankerlig: “This week is very important – the first three days are quite crucial… As I said, it’s also important that as we recover units, we also build in margins for the recovery of the reserve, specifically the fuel at Ankerlig.”

That night, at the Emergency Response Command Centre meeting, Bala noted: “Just on the final side, you guys have pretty much depleted all the diesel.” It was less a question than a statement, and records we’ve seen suggest that Ankerlig’s tank levels were by then dangerously low.

On Monday 24 February – with stage 3 load shedding still in place – Eskom switched off Ankerlig again. The diesel suppliers at Ankerlig hadn’t caused load shedding, but in the middle of a crisis they had made it worse.

The money floodgates open

Records show that between February and April 2025, Eskom made 15 prepayments – collectively worth R2.97-billion. AmaBhungane understands that senior Eskom officials have defended the payments – recorded as “downpayments” on the SAP system – as necessary to keep the lights on.

During the Emergency Response Command Centre meeting on 23 February, Eskom CFO Calib Cassim said: “The issue is not finances; it’s just the logistics. So [Nxumalo] knows what’s required. If he needs me to approve anything, I approve it immediately.”

Yet records suggest that the prepayments were ineffective: by the time stage 6 load shedding hit on 23 February, Eskom had made three prepayments in a bid to secure an additional 20 million litres of diesel, yet Ankerlig had still been forced to go offline.

In the days that followed, Eskom made some of its most lavish prepayments: on Tuesday 25 February, Severino received a prepayment of R374-million (20 million litres), and two days later it received another of R473-million (25 million litres).

Severino, an obscure company owned by a 25-year-old recent graduate, would ultimately receive eight prepayments totalling R1.37-billion.

On 7 March 2025 – in a pattern that was now becoming predictable – load shedding struck again, and as tank levels plunged, Ankerlig was switched off.

To Severino’s credit, it had delivered 340 truckloads of diesel (13.7 million litres) since receiving R815-million in prepayments. Yet this was still not enough to keep Ankerlig’s tanks full.

Did the diesel exist?

What Eskom will not explain is why it placed such massive orders – 45 million litres over two days – when it knew that Severino only had access to 10 million litres of storage.

When the tender was advertised it was explicit that Eskom would only pay suppliers after fuel had been delivered into their tanks. Bidders also had to show that they had rented the tank for the entire five years of the contract.

Yet, after the contract was awarded, Eskom had let this slide for some of the suppliers: Nutinox had received its first order without a dedicated tank (it later secured one at PetroSA’s Montague Gardens tank farm), while Lanele offered to provide Eskom with access to free storage through various agreements.

“We… had an enterprise development partnership with Astron which… gave us access to Astron storage,” Mtshali, the Lanele CEO, told us when we interviewed him in April. “We then started adding a second terminal which was Burgan Cape Terminal, under Vesquin, and it was primarily because we were getting a storage arrangement without having to incur costs.”

This arrangement would save Eskom money – it was paying Nutinox R1.2-million a month for five million litres of storage and Severino R2.3-million for 10 million litres – but it also gave Eskom less visibility over millions of litres of fuel it had paid for and recorded as “received” on its books.

By August 2025, records suggest that Eskom had “received” and paid for 299 million litres of diesel, but only 212 million had been delivered by truck to Ankerlig, leaving another 86 million litres of fuel – Eskom assets worth R1.6-billion – supposedly scattered across an unknown number of private storage tanks.

By the end of June 2026, roughly 40 million litres (currently worth R1-billion) was still outstanding, almost all of it from Lanele.

But was the fuel actually there?

Hunting for Eskom’s fuel

The reason that Eskom’s investigators ended up at the gates of the Burgan Terminal last month was that the numbers did not make sense. 

Eskom records are explicit that Lanele’s last two orders – both for 20 million litres of diesel – had been “received” at the Burgan Terminal on 3 and 15 July 2025. The terminal can store 125 million litres of fuel, but it is also a major import hub for fuel for the Western Cape.

Mtshali had told us that Lanele had negotiated a deal to store fuel at Burgan free of charge: “So initially Burgan, they wanted to charge us for storage. The initial deal recap included a storage line in there. We pushed back… we were able to land a solution at least for one year which did not include us having to pay for storage.”

But was it realistic to imagine that Burgan’s owners, VTTI, had allowed Eskom to hog a third of its storage for a year completely free of charge, as Mtshali had implied?

VTTI is entitled to charge 34c per litre for Burgan’s storage – a tariff set by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa). Over 12 months, 40 million litres of storage space could generate R164-million in revenue, and there was no way VTTI – which is part-owned by Vitol – had given that away for free.

Why did Eskom prepay R721-million?

The emails we received from VTTI, Vitol and Vesquin make it clear that Lanele had negotiated a very different deal: Vesquin had agreed to keep five million litres of diesel in a commingled tank at Burgan Terminal, earmarked for Eskom.

“Lanele has contracted with Vesquin to supply its emergency diesel commitments to Eskom. Vesquin, which benefits from its shareholder Vitol’s robust supply network, will deliver the outstanding balance of diesel when it is required,” director Harvey Foster told us. “Seventy percent of the contracted diesel has already been supplied and, for the duration of the contract, 5 million litres or their remaining balance will remain in-tank at Burgan earmarked for ultimate supply to Eskom to ensure supply is immediately available.”

Lanele’s contract with Eskom could have accommodated this back-to-back supply agreement with Vesquin, although it raises questions about what the point of Lanele was, when Vesquin itself had the level 3 Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment status that the tender required.

Instead, what makes the deal “unheard of” – as one industry source described it – is that Eskom seemingly agreed to prepay Lanele R721-million a year ago for fuel that has yet to materialise.

When we spoke to Mtshali in April, he denied that Lanele received any prepayments: “Lanele had to first secure fuel for Eskom in-tank prior to Eskom payment,” he insisted.

In its press release at the end of July, Eskom had described the 40 million litres as “delivered or available”. Last week, Eskom clarified: “Available in this context means diesel that was procured and stored offsite and available on scheduled request.”

Both the tender and the contract had been clear that Eskom would only pay for diesel that had actually been delivered, not just promised.

If Eskom paid Lanele, believing that the full 40 million litres of diesel was sitting in storage tanks just down the road from Ankerlig, there is a word for that: fraud.

If Eskom officials knew they were buying nothing more than an IOU, then they will need to explain to investigators why it was necessary to prepay R721-million for diesel that, a year later, has yet to materialise.

The flood of prepayments we’ve described was supposedly authorised because of Eskom’s load-shedding crisis, yet what we’ve uncovered so far suggests that explanation does not entirely add up.

Where is the forensic report?

Eskom has spent an extraordinary amount of time investigating the diesel contracts it signed in December 2024.

In March last year, it appointed Itsamaya Holdings on an emergency contract to investigate wide-ranging “allegations of priority economic crimes” at Eskom.

“There is a threat of major consequential expense to Eskom. There is a threat of serious damage to Eskom’s reputation. Therefore, early delivery is critical,” Eskom had told the National Treasury to explain why Itsamaya’s R37.7-million contract had been awarded without a tender.

In August last year, investigators were also asked to look at the Eskom diesel tender.

But a year later, Eskom keeps pushing back the deadline to finalise the investigation: “On assessment of the findings of the investigation report, it became apparent that further document analysis and interpretation, supplementary interviews and consideration of identified legal aspects of the management of contracts were required to test the legal soundness,” it said at the end of July.

We asked Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa if he had seen the report.

“The minister has not yet received the final report,” his spokesperson, Tsakane Khambane, told us earlier this month. “Eskom has advised that the report remains subject to governance, legal review and quality assurance processes to ensure that any findings can support appropriate disciplinary, civil or criminal action. The ministry is actively monitoring the matter and has requested a comprehensive briefing as soon as these processes are concluded.”

Wasn’t he concerned that Eskom was being allowed to review and potentially alter the findings of a report that could implicate senior people in Eskom, we asked, a bit like allowing Eskom to mark its own homework?

“The investigation was conducted by an independent forensic firm and there is no indication that Eskom is altering its findings,” Khambane told us. “The current legal and assurance review processes are undertaken by an external legal firm and senior counsel… As a shareholder, I expect all findings to be acted upon and all implicated parties to be held accountable, regardless of seniority.”

The report, when it is finally released, is likely to be embarrassing for Eskom.

Since Dan Marokane took over as CEO in March 2024, Eskom has undergone a stunning turnaround: last month, the energy availability factor – a measure of how the power plants are performing – reached 82%.

More importantly, Eskom has not had load shedding since May 2025. If it turns out that in the background, Eskom was paying billions of rand in irregular prepayments, it’ll dim the light of that achievement. DM

This story was produced by the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism. Sign up for their newsletter.