Former Minerals and Energy and Justice Minister Penuell Maduna (64) is embroiled in a legal battle to stop the millions he is owed from a broad-based BEE deal with petrochemicals giant Sasol from ending up in the hands of his ex-wife, Nompumelelo Maduna, says a Sunday Times report. He clinched the Sasol deal just two years after leaving the Cabinet in 2004. Maduna – now vice-chair at law firm Bowman Gilfillan – filed urgent papers in the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) recently to stop Nompumelelo gaining control of about R18m in dividends scheduled to be paid out by Sasol this month. The court dismissed the urgency of the application, striking it off the court roll and saying that Maduna had not given Nompumelelo (61) and the other five respondents sufficient time to 'digest’ the 690 pages of his founding affidavit.  

Nompumelelo’s lawyer David Feldman reportedly told the Sunday Times that he was preparing answering affidavits in response to the ‘scurrilous’, ‘highly defamatory’ and ‘untrue’ allegations. The affidavits would ‘comprehensively disprove those defamatory allegations’, said Feldman. As the lead promoter of the broadbased BEE transaction, Maduna received a stake of 17.9% of the acquisition, with a personal initial value estimated to be just under R260m. Maduna says in his court papers that he regrets the day that he made his ex-wife a co-director of the shelf company he set up to receive the payouts from the BEE deal, Ngazana Liquid Fuels. She had ‘abused my trust’ and along with others had ‘sided against me’ to redirect the funds to herself, totally cutting him out. He accuses her of diverting 51% of the shareholding to her family trust, says the report.

Full Sunday Times report