Eskom has published its consolidated annual financial results, which revealed the remuneration package of former CEO Andre de Ruyter.

In its full-year financials for the 12 months ending 31 March 2023 on Tuesday (31 October), Eskom reported a massive loss of R23.9 billion for the 2022/23 financial year, exacerbated by a huge escalation in load shedding, mounting municipal debt and skyrocketing losses due to criminal activity.

Despite the ailing SOE’s financial woes, Eskom revealed De Ruyter received R6.9 million in the 2023 financial year – slightly less than the R7.1 million he received the year before.

De Ruyter’s total remuneration included a basic salary of R6.453 million and other payments of R456,000 – working out to around R20,000 per day.

In contrast, former Eskom CFO – and now interim CEO – Calib Cassim earned R5.5 million in 2023 – which was a 9% increase from the R5.05 million he earned in 2022.

De Ruyter has been in the headlines for a significant part of 2023 after a broad-sweeping interview with journalist Annika Larsen in February, where he admitted to failing to prevent load shedding in South Africa and touched on what he sees as entrenched corruption within government and governance around Eskom.

He lifted the lid on organised criminal cartels linked to politicians stealing around R1 billion per month from the power utility, adding that the government was more interested in short-term political gains than long-term sustainability for the country.

The ANC denied allegations of political meddling and corruption at Eskom and said de Ruyter needed to face consequences for his false allegations.

In its latest results, Eskom noted mounting losses related to irregular and wasteful expenditure as well as losses attributed to criminal activity.

With irregular expenditure, the group’s closing balance was R91.15 billion for the year, having incurred further irregular spending of R5 billion during the year. This comprised R2.6 billion of new incidents and R2.4 billion of historic incidents.

In terms of wasteful expenditure, Eskom said it only incurred R105 million of new expenditure categorised as fruitless or wasteful, R2 million of which was recovered. The group also ended the year with a massive R6 billion of “material losses” attributed to criminal activity.

This includes R344 million related to theft and damage to equipment, R81 million attributed to fraud and corruption and a whopping R5.6 billion linked to “non-technical losses”.

Following de Ruyter’s resignation, Eskom appointed Calib Cassim as acting group chief executive and is still waiting to appoint a new chief executive. Eskom chairman Mteto Nyati said the board has forwarded three Eskom CEO candidates to public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan.

They are now waiting for Gordhan and the government to complete the necessary process to appoint a new Eskom chief executive.