Absa creator Piet Badenhorst’s death on Tuesday reminded me of what he said was the best way to uncover fraud within a company: force the guy who holds the files out of the building.
Badenhorst was an independently minded disruptor who prided himself on living outside banking’s close knit upper echelon. It cost him heavily when he hired Bob Aldworth as Absa’s head of credit. Aldworth had recently been fired as CEO of the SA operation of Barclays. Insiders knew what had happened, but those days personal dirt tended to be swept under the carpet, so the public – and Badenhorst – were none the wiser.
Not long after he walked into Absa, Aldworth got back to his tricks, granting himself a loan to buy half of a coal mine. When the mine, Derwent Coal, flooded, Aldworth simply wrote off the bank’s debt. When I asked Badenhorst why it took so long for the fraud to be uncovered, he said it only came to light when the dirty banker was forced to actually take leave.
A week ago, Eskom evicted the last of former CEO Brian Molefe’s team by suspending CFO Anoj Singh. This finally opens the way for a thorough investigation into the parastatal’s books. Including what actually happened when the Guptas, helped by Eskom’s execs, screwed Glencore. Ironically, just like Aldworth, it was all to do with a coal mine.
