SA Express provisionally liquidated

South Africa’s state-owned regional airline SA Express, has been placed in provisional liquidation after its business rescue practitioners filed an urgent court application, a reliable source confirmed to Fin24 on Tuesday.

This comes after practitioners lodged the application in the Pretoria High Court on March 25, 2020.

SA Express was placed under business rescue last month due to financial pressures that resulted from years of mismanagement and state capture, the department said. The application to place it into business rescue was brought by ZieglerSA, a service provider to the airline.

The practitioners claim the government deliberately withheld financial support to the tune of R350m ($19m) from the SA Department of Public Enterprises.

At the time of the application for liquidation, the DPE had indicated that it would determine its course of action after studying the liquidation application.