Africa-Press – South-Africa. Johannesburg – The former chief executive of Gupta-linked Trillian Management Consulting feared having to take responsibility for a R300 million Bank of Baroda overdraft facility for generations.
Bianca Goodson told the commission of inquiry into state capture on Thursday that investment management firm Integrated Capital Management director Clive Angel, who recruited her to be Trillian Management Consulting chief executive, wanted her to sign a Bank of Baroda overdraft facility the day before she resigned with immediate effect.
She said on March 18, 2016, Angel instructed her to sign some letters and send them back to another Integrated Capital Management director Mark Chipkin.
Integrated Capital Management was acting as an initial public offering assisting in the establishment of then newly-formed holding company Trillian Capital Partners and its subsidiaries, which included Trillian Management Consulting.
Angel, who approached Goodson in October 2015 to join Trillian Management Consulting, demanded she open an account with the Gupta-linked Bank of Baroda with the company’s chief operations officer and hand over its entire control to Chipkin.
Goodson said she found the instruction strange as Trillian Management Consulting had opened an Absa account in January 2016.
Angel, Goodson explained, told her Trillian Management Consulting needed Bank of Baroda to facilitate payments to eGateway, which had provided the company with Indian employees, getting 77% of whatever Trillian would earn in Eskom’s generation workstream and paid exorbitant fees of about R500 000 an hour.
The Trillian Management Consulting chief operations officer refused to sign and Goodson was summoned to Integrated Capital Management offices in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg, where she found a Bank of Baroda representative with all the documentation she was required to sign.
Goodson said she was taken aback by the fact that the account made provision for an overdraft facility of R300m when Trillian Management Consulting’s similar facility at Absa was R3m.
She testified that even the Bank of Baroda representative asked if she was sure she wanted to sign the documents.
Goodson changed the terms of the Bank of Baroda to state that all transactions would need approval by her and Chipkin, who was not happy about the alterations.
She said she could hear a furious Angel screaming “who does she think she is” to Chipkin.
The Bank of Baroda account debacle led to Goodson resigning the following day.
“Something is going on and I don’t know what it is but I am resigning. I expected to take risks but they get the benefits. I left with immediate effect,” Goodson told the commission.
At a later meeting, she said Trillian Capital Partners boss and Gupta associate Eric Wood asked her what he could do to make her change her mind but refused her terms, which included changing the company’s business processes, giving her access to its finances and allowing her to negotiate her own contracts.
Goodson recalled telling Wood to let her manage this business as a chief executive would and he said that would never happen.
She said she shouted at Angel, telling him how dare he put her in such a compromising position.
”One of the things I even said to him (Angel) is that it seems you have put me in a position where my daughter could lose a mother. What about you and your children? How could you do this to me? And I was in tears and I have never seen or spoken to any of them since,” she said.
Goodson said the biggest and most significant risk to her was the Bank of Baroda account.
”If I opened this account, I can’t imagine paying back R300m in my lifetime. R300m is so much money that I’m pretty sure that my daughter’s children would have to be paying off a debt like that,” she explained.
Goodson asked: “Why would I take on a responsibility of R300m and give it to somebody else?”
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