Gangster State

Vivian Reddy seemed especially keen to put distance between him and
his son’s company. After the Mail & Guardian first reported on Empire
Technology’s R 171 -million nuclear contract, Reddy took the
newspaper to the Press Ombudsman. He took umbrage at being
mentioned in a report about his son’s activities. The Press
Ombudsman’s appeals panel eventually decided that the Mail &
Guardian only needed to revise its headline. Instead of saying ‘Zuma
pals clinch first nuclear deal’, in reference to both Vivian and Shantan,
the headline should have mentioned only one ‘Zuma pal’, namely
Shantan.^13
But I subsequently found plenty of proof that Edison and Empire
Technology were closely linked. On their respective websites, both
companies list the same address in Umhlanga for their KwaZulu-Natal
offices. For its Gauteng office, Empire Technology lists an address on
Sandton’s bustling 5 th Street. When I went looking for their premises, I
found the name ‘Edison Power Group’ on the office building’s shiny
exterior. And when I phoned Edison’s Sandton office and asked a
receptionist if I could speak to Shantan Reddy, she told me he was out,
but that she would take a message. There’s more. Shantan and Yuri
Mohan attended the 2015 edition of the Association of Municipal
Electricity Utilities’ annual conference, according to a list of
delegates.^14 At the time of the event, Empire Technology had already
secured its R 60 -million contract from the Free State government.
However, according to the delegates list, Reddy and Mohan attended
the conference as representatives of ‘Edison Power Group’. Finally,
when I approached Mohan for comment in late 2018 , he asked me to
send him queries via email. ‘Send it to yuri@edison ...,’ he began,
before quickly correcting himself and giving me his email address at