JSE fines two ex-officials
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2+$11(6%85* - The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE has imposed fines and issued public censures on two former officials from companies linked to businessman ITbal Survé.
Abdul Malick Salie, the former Chief Investment Officer at African ETuity Empowerment Investments Limited (AEEI , was found to be one of the people responsible for transgressing listings reTuirements with regards to AYO Technology’s controversial 2018 interim results. These contained errors and were published shortly after the IT group listed on the stock exchange in December 2017.
Salie was briefly AYO’s CFO in 2019. The JSE fined him R250 000. AYO, on the other hand, was fined R6.5 million in 2020 for the publication of those results, which contained material errors. AYO is a technology company that falls within Survé’s Sekunjalo stable of companies. It is a subsidiary of AEEI, which itself is a subsidiary of Sekunjalo Investment +oldings (SI+ . SI+ is 100 per cent owned by a trust which has Survé as a trustee.The JSE said yesterday that it had fined AYO’s other former CFO, Naahied Gamieldien, R250 000 for breaching listing reTuirements, specifically with regards to payments involving boutiTue asset management company, 3 Laws Capital, which was expected to manage funds for the tech firm. Sekunjalo was the majority shareholder of 3 Laws at the time.
The bourse said it considered that both Salie and Gamieldien were transparent and fully cooperated with its investigations when it decided on the fine. The JSE’s investigation into other current and former AYO officials is ongoing.
Involved
This is not the first time the JSE has acted against officials involved in AYO’s controversial 2018 interim results.
In February, it banned two former AYO directors, Mbuso .ho]a and
Telang Ntsasa, from acting as directors of listed companies for five years. :hile the two did not prepare the interim results themselves, they failed in their oversight role as members of AYO’s audit and risk committee.
According to the JSE, when Gamieldien was CFO in February 2018, she emailed a copy of the draft unaudited results to Salie and AYO’s then-non-executive director and AEEI CEO .halid Abdulla, who also happens to be Surve’s brother-in-law. Abdulla told Salie, who wasn’t a director at AYO at the time, to adjust specific items in those results. The results that AYO management approved for publication included these adjustments.
:ith Gamieldien, the JSE found that she omitted to disclose a material investment of R400 million paid to 3 Laws on March 5, 2018 as a ‘post-balance sheet event’ in the unaudited 2018 interim results. She also contravened regulations by carrying out payments directly into 3 Laws bank account, which resulted in AYO breaching listing reTuirements. She also did not ensure that shareholders and the public were notified about the relevant information on the 3 Laws transactions.
%oth Salie and Gamieldien had previously testified at the Mpati Commission on InTuiry into the Public Investment Corporation (PIC about their time at AYO.
The PIC, which manages over R2 trillion in investments on behalf of public servants, subscribed to all AYO’s shares at issue for R4.3 billion. The group’s share price has since plunged by over 90 per cent from more than R40 a share to about R3 a share currently.
According to news reports at the time, Salie testified how, at Survé’s insistence, the valuation of AYO rose following a meeting in 2017 between Survé, Salie and Abdulla. Survé told the commission that the listing was led by the teams at AEEI and AYO.
Gamieldien told the inTuiry, according to reports, that Abdulla called her to a meeting at his home to discuss the technology company’s February 2018 interim results, and asked her to ‘adjust’ margins to increase its profit.
The Mpati report found that members within the boards of the Sekunjalo Group of companies were ‘not independent’.
The report ruled that the R4.3 billion transaction between the PIC and AYO demonstrated the ‘malfeasance of the Sekunjalo Group (and the impropriety of the process and practice of the PIC’. It recommended that the PIC conduct a forensic review of all transactions entered into with the Sekunjalo Group and take all ‘necessary steps’ to recover the money it is owed.
website last year, including their phone numbers and email addresses. The investigation looked into ‘Facebook Search, Facebook Messenger Contact Importer and Instagram Contact Importer tools in relation to processing carried out by Meta’ between May 2018 and September 2019, the data protection commission said. The social network has previously said the data is old and that the problem had been found and fixed in 2019.
Changes
Meta said in a statement on Monday that ‘protecting the privacy and security of people’s data is its probe following revelations fundamental to how our that ‘a collated dataset business works’ and that of Facebook personal it had cooperated fully data’ had been published with regulators.³:e made on the internet. Personal changes to our systems information on 533 million during the time in Tuestion, Facebook users worldwide including removing reemerged on a hacker the ability to scrape our rose from 897c per share to 939c in the course of the six months to end-September, but the firm said the outlook was ‘very uncertain,’ while its shares were trading at almost 70 per cent discount at period end.
Reports
features in this way using phone numbers,´ the company said. ³8nauthorised data scraping is unacceptable and against our rules, and we will continue working with our peers on this industry challenge. :e are reviewing this decision carefully.´
Data watchdogs in Europe saw their powers increased overnight in May 2018, when the GDPR took effect and gave them the power to levy fines of as much as four per cent of a company’s annual sales.
The biggest penalties under GDPR so far are a record €746 million fine for Ama]on.com by its lead privacy watchdog in Luxembourg, followed by a €405 million fine for Meta’s Instagram, and a €225 million fine for Meta’s :hatsApp unit, both by the Irish authority.