In July this year, Ajay Gupta said he would speak to someone in the deputy judge president's office and arrange to have court proceedings involving Brian Molefe postponed until next year, the parliamentary inquiry into state capture on Eskom heard on Wednesday.
This shock testimony was delivered by suspended Eskom legal services head Suzanne Daniels, who had told MPs that she met Ajay Gupta in an apartment near Melrose Arch in Johannesburg on 29 July this year.
She had allegedly been contacted by Salim Essa, who asked her to join him for coffee.
"I met [Essa] at Melrose Arch... and walked to a [nearby] apartment," she said. "As we walked into the lounge area, there were four people whom I was introduced to: Mr Ajay Gupta, Mr Duduzane Zuma, Ben Martins and a Chinese lady whose name I cannot remember. At that point, I was actually speechless."
"The purpose of the discussion was around the process of the Molefe court proceedings. Mr Gupta wanted to know how far they were."
Daniels said there had been an Eskom meeting with the deputy judge president (DJP) to discuss when the matter would be set down.
"He [Gupta] then said — it was very difficult to understand him because he speaks in a very heavy Indian accent — that the gist... was he will have to talk to someone in the DJP's office to make sure that the hearing takes place after December 2017, so that it could be dealt with then," she said.
"He then mentioned something about Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, but I really couldn't follow what he was saying, partly because I couldn't believe where I was, and what I was hearing."
Daniels said she then left, went home and poured herself a stiff whisky.
This is a developing story.