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Durban – A Durban company, which rakes in millions each year from its contract to run the city’s parking meter system, faces liquidation over a R26 million claim for rental fees.
Joburg-based company EOH Security and Technologies has brought an application in the Durban High Court to have Emtateni Logistics, which lists Durban businessman Sifiso Zulu as a former director, liquidated.
Alternatively, the company is asking for an order placing Emtateni in provisional liquidation or ordering it to pay the R26m it owes plus interest.
In 2007, Emtateni was awarded a five-year contract to manage eThekwini Municipality’s parking meter system.
The contract, which expired in November, was extended and is expected to end in December.
On Sunday, eThekwini’s deputy head of road systems management, Carlos Esteves, said: “As far as I know, the court application for liquidation has not been concluded and the company has not been liquidated.”
This meant that until the legal process had run its course the city tender remained in force.
The Mercury was previously told by the city that Emtateni made R4m a year from the contract.
In papers filed in court, EOH director Robin Payne said Emtateni owed it R26m in rental fees.
Payne said that in 2006 the company entered into a contract with Emtateni, which was represented by Zulu at the time, for the rental of security equipment, including pay-and-display machines and an information management system.
He said in 2007 there had been a second rental agreement for the lease of other equipment.
He added that the basis of the agreements was that Emtateni had been given the contract for the municipality’s parking meter system and this had been its sole source of income since 2007.
Payne said Emtateni was so far in arrears that it was still trying to catch up on October 2010 installments.
“Emtateni has made deficit payments for more than a year now and it is clear that it will not and cannot pay the monthly dues. It’s clear that its main source of income will diminish when the contract (with the municipality) ends.”
The company’s attorney had sent a letter of demand and follow-up correspondence since April to Emtateni, but no payments had been made, Payne said.
Investigations had revealed that Emtateni had no immovable or substantial movable assets to satisfy the debt and a request for financial statements from the company had also come to naught, he said.
Payne claimed there was a “tangled web” of businesses that Emtateni’s current directors – Clive Naidoo, Ricky Pillay and Pakkiri Pillay – were involved in which warranted further investigation.
Some of the directors’ other businesses operated from the same business address as Emtateni, he said.
“This is clearly not a coincidence and it is my submission that all of these entities are intertwined and Emtateni has a finger in each pie.”
“It is abundantly clear that Emtateni’s directors have created this web of deceit – (it’s) clearly an attempt to create a smokescreen by concluding different transactions under the name of other entities and shifting funds from one to another.”
Emtateni did not file papers but, in a July 8 letter from its attorney, Severaj Incorporated, to EOH’s attorney, which is attached to the court file, the company said it would not oppose the application. But it said it reserved the right to respond to the allegations made in the application.
In an earlier letter in April, from Severaj, the company disputed that it owed R26m.
The case has been postponed to September.
kamini.padayachee@inl.co.za
The Mercury
