MultiChoice is now caught in lies as Naspers and MultiChoice's scandal keeps growing about its alleged involvement undue influence on the SABC to chance the government's decisions on set-top boxes (STBs) and unencrypted access for digital terrestrial television (DTT).
MultiChoice and Naspers is now being linked to serious allegations of corruption and State Capture through links and exorbitant amounts of money paid to the controversial Gupta family, the disgraced former minister of communications Faith Muthambi, the criticised ANN7 (DStv 405) channel, and the SABC.
MultiChoice has been asked in a media enquiry if it will be doing any investigation, and if any such investigation would be internal or external but MultiChoice has not given any clear answer to the question.
What is becoming clear is more and more apparent lies from MultiChoice.
In shocking new #GuptaLeaks, last week dropped a bombshell email trove, showing how MultiChoice made a dubious R25 million payment to the Guptas for its low-rated, biased and mistake-filled trash channel, in addition to upping the money MultiChoice pays to ANN7 from R50 million to a whopping R141 million per year.
The emails revealed that MultiChoice is paying ANN7 R141.38 million as part of its contract for the channel, a channel that stands accused of fostering racial discord, biased and unbalanced coverage and targeting politicians who are against president Jacob Zuma.
According to a 4th channel amendment agreement signed by Glen Marques in September 2015, MultiChoice upped its payment from R50 million to R100 million to a staggering R141 380 000 per year although ANN7 is the least watched of the three local TV news channels with SABC News and eNCA as rivals.
MultiChoice in response to a media enquiry said that "the fee structure for the ANN7 contract is in line with the costs of developing and running such a channel, and ANN7 is definitely not the highest-paid local news channel on the DStv platform".
"The R25 million fee is also not unusual. In this case, it was a pro rata payment in terms of an amendment agreement."
"The fee structure for the ANN7 contract is in line with the costs of developing and running such a channel, and ANN7 is definitely not the highest-paid local news channel on the DStv platform."
So MultiChoice said paying this massive amount of money is "not unusual" as far as a TV news channel is concerned.
Yesterday the Democratic Alliance (DA) political party's Phumzile Van Damme revealed an explosive transcript of a 6 June 2013 meeting between MultiChoice's then CEO Imtiaz Patel and chairperson Nolo Letele with the SABC board and executives.
"We would not normally pay for a news channel. Okay. We don't," Imtiaz Patel said in the meeting according to the transcript.
"There is a unique relationship with e.tv… But, besides that we don't pay for any other news channel, anyway, okay. So we wouldn't normally pay you for a news channel."
MultiChoice either lied then, or MultiChoice lied now and it doesn't look good for the pay-TV operator who has so far ignored calls from the public and political parties for an investigation into allegations of collusion, corruption, and undue influence in South Africa's digital TV migration process.
