Gangster State

By early September, nearly the entire R 77. 5 million had been drained
from 605 Consulting’s account when Edwin Sodi, Mpambani’s partner
in the joint venture, came knocking. According to their original
agreement, Sodi should have received half of the asbestos audit’s
proceeds, once all the payments to third parties had been settled. But
Mpambani had not shared the final payment with his partner. Sodi
fired off an email to Mpambani on 5 September. ‘I expect in my
account R 38 212 500 in the next 24 hours and nothing less,’ he fumed.
The IgoFiles show that Mpambani had sent Sodi a ‘payment recon’, a
spreadsheet that supposedly justified why he had not paid his partner
half of the final R 77. 5 million. According to the document, the public
protector had laid claim to R 60 million of the joint venture’s earnings
from the asbestos audit. In a subsequent court battle, Sodi elaborated
on this development.
According to court filings, the two men met in Sandton on 6
September. Mpambani told Sodi that ‘he [Mpambani] had been
informed by the Free State Department [of Human Settlements] that
the Public Protector intended recovering approximately R 60 million ...
on the basis that the [department] had been “overcharged”,’ Sodi
explained in his affidavit, adding that he had been ‘sceptical’ about
Mpambani’s story. He had good cause to feel that way. The public
protector does not have a mandate to seize the proceeds of dodgy
contracts. Furthermore, in this case, the public protector had not even
published a report on the matter. Sodi again asked Mpambani to pay
him his half. Later that day, Mpambani transferred just R 8 million to
Sodi’s company. The outstanding R 30 million formed the basis of the
legal proceedings Sodi would later institute against the executor of
Mpambani’s estate.