Pressure mounts on BRP as Optimum Coal crisis deepens

PRESSURE is mounting on the business rescue practitioners (BRP) of Optimum Coal Mines after employees at the operation – and other mines formerly owned by Tegeta Resources -were not paid their March salaries, according to a statement today by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

The union called on the BRP – Louis Klopper and Kurt Knoop – to sell the mines, saying there are “… interested investors to buy them”. However, this may not be a simple task as Klopper and Knoop are have also been threatened with legal action by Charles King SA, a company based in Switzerland which claims to have an agreement to buy Optimum Coal Mine, in particular.

TimesSelect, a publication aligned to BusinessLive, cited a letter signed off by Amin al Zarooni, a director of Swiss-based firm, Charles King SA, in which it states some R66m has already been paid for Optimum Coal Mine with the balance due on completion of certain conditions precedent.

Charles King is the company that is claimed to have bought some 7% coal export entitlement through Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) for about R2bn. A coal executive told Miningmx earlier this month this would be impossible as Optimum Coal Mine is indivisible from the RBCT entitlement.

TimesSelect also demonstrated that there are strong links between Al Zarooni and Tegeta Resources, a company owned by Gupta family. Tegeta bought Optimum Coal Mine out of business rescue in 2016 in suspicious circumstances. Tegeta ran into financial difficulties after the Bank of Baroda, the only bank that would lend to Tegeta, decided to withdraw from South Africa.

At first, the sale of Optimum Coal Mine and other Tegeta Resources companies such as Koornfontein and Brakfontein coal mines, might be a relatively simple matter provided a degree of certainty could be established as to the whereabouts or extant monies left in Optimum Coal Mine’s rehabilitation fund – alleged to have been raided by Tegeta.

A number of potential bidders emerged including Exxaro Resources, Seriti Consortium and Phakamisa Consortium, a newly created company in which Bernard Swanepoel’s Last Mile Fund, held with Patrice Motsepe, are shareholders.

Soon after, however, Ruanne Kruger, a lawyer said to be first representing the National Union of Mineworkers and then Direko, a creditor of Tegeta Resources’ companies, applied to have the business rescue practitioners, Louis Klopper and Kurt Knoop, removed from their positions on the basis that they, too, were an elaborate front for the Gupta family.

NUM

The NUM said it “strongly condemned” the BRP for failing to keep their word as employees at Optimum Coal and Koornfontein mines were not paid for this month. “In meetings held between the BRP and the NUM, BRP committed [himself] to pay the workers by the end of the month,” said the NUM in its statement.

“It is yet another false promise,” it said. This followed meetings with the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) and the Parliament Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources in which the commitments to pay workers were made. The NUM said the BRP was being “… economical with the truth”.