PIC vs AYO: Witnesses confirm AYO and BTSA had a strategic relationship
Cape Town - Former African Equity Empowerment Investments (AEEI) chief investment officer Malick Salie yesterday said he had no reason to suspect anything untoward about the data Ayo Technology Solutions (AYO) received from British Telecom SA (BTSA), as it came from that firm’s erstwhile managing director, Kevin Hardy.
Salie was being cross-examined by AYO senior counsel Nazeer Cassim in a case in which AYO is defending itself against claims by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) that a shares subscription agreement worth R4.3 billion between the parties in 2017 was illegal.
Cassim had asked whether the data AYO received before compiling its pre-listing statement (PLS) released to the PIC, had come from Hardy, who at that point was still managing director of BTSA, before he later moved to head up AYO.
Salie said AEEI was a shareholder in BTSA and, as such, the preparatory work on the PLS was a joint effort between teams from AYO and BTSA.
Salie worked on the AYO listing as an executive of AEEI, and in his evidence – led by PIC senior counsel Vincent Maleka – Salie testified about the various interactions and meetings that set the tone for AYO’s PLS.
In 2019 Salie, who has since left AEEI’s employ, gave testimony at the Mpati Commission of inquiry into the affairs of the PIC.
Earlier, the cross-examination of BTSA managing director Bertrandt Delport, by AYO senior counsel Karrisha Pillay, concluded with more questions about his previous testimony.
On Tuesday was Delport’s third day on the witness stand. Pillay took him back to the issue of the 30% effective shareholding in BTSA that was held at the time by AEEI, and which AYO would subscribe for upon AYO listing.
This shareholding, along with a partnership between the entities, was known as the “key strategic relationship with BT” and “alliance agreement” (the BT transaction), and internally at BTSA as “Project Zebra”.
In terms of the arrangement, and as per the pre-listing document and the BT Alliance agreement, AYO would “take over and provide the BT transition services in South Africa, including the BT service desk, technical engineering capacity, maintenance and support services post the listing, and will provide such services to BT and its clients in South Africa, and to companies within the AYO Technology Group”.
During the cross-examination, Pillay put it Delport that the PLS constituted the sole final and binding offer by AYO to the PlC, and that any representations made prior to the publication of the final PLS, whether oral or written, constituted part of the preliminary negotiations – to which he agreed.
As Pillay took him through both the draft and final PLS, she kept stopping to ask Delport if there was anything he considered misleading in his understanding of the document, to which he replied, “No”.
Delport, however, did have one caveat that he kept repeating; this was that his concern with the PLS was that it was built on discussions between AYO and BTSA on Project Zebra, which made it sound like a foregone conclusion.
Pressing him on this point, Pillay asked: “But you accept that there was a strategic relationship with benefits to all parties?”
Delport: “If it materialised, then yes.”
The case continues today (Wednesday).
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za