Adamus Stemmet: Mpati must not forget PIC rogues in VBS saga

By Adamus Stemmet*

Thank you for publishing this excellent article by Pauli van Wyk again. As you will remember there were actually two lady whistleblowers at the VBS saga, Mariette Venter and Yvonne Page of Prasa. See par 103 of the report “THE GREAT BANK  HEIST” by Adv Motau. With hindsight we now know that VBS was working like a Ponzi scheme. Yvonne Page was clever enough to realise it right at the beginning and reported the matter to Treasury. She against all orders thwarted plans to get PRASA to invest R1bn in VBS bank. One wonders whether she was rewarded by PRASA for her efforts.

Both these two ladies deserve a medal for their guts.

The Motau Report was issued on 10 April 2018. Many many people implicated in corrupt activities should have been prosecuted by now. Why the delay? We at the Association for the Monitoring and Advocacy of Govt Pensions (AMAGP) have a special interest in the VBS saga because millions of workers’ and pensioners’ money, which was invested there by the PIC has been lost.

Two senior officials of the PIC were seconded to the VBS board. Instead of guarding the interests of GEPF money they admitted each of benefitting more than R7m each for “keeping silent “. Eventually Adv Motau found that Ernest Nesane gained R16.6m and Paul Magula R14.8m. Both of them have not been prosecuted yet. We have also not heard about any of their assets being seized to recover some of the losses of, inter alia the GEPF.

The  obvious contravention of Section 34 of the “Corruption” Act 12 of 2004 (know or suspect corruption) and not reporting it has for some unknown reason thus far apparently been overlooked. Surely members of both the PIC and GEPF must have known or suspected corruption when carrying out their monitor functions.

At this speed corruption will never be eradicated. Are we not trying hard enough?

• Adamus Stemmet, spokesperson, AMAGP.