Silence about R150m banked with VBS
THE mayor and municipal manager of one of the North West municipalities which invested R150 million with VBS Mutual Bank have gone to ground after the National Treasury ordered them to return the money to the revenue fund.
Boitumelo Mahlangu, the mayor of Dr Ruth Mompati district municipality in Vryburg, has, since last month, failed to answer questions about her municipality’s failure to act against the municipal manager, Jerry Mononela, for investing with VBS.
The North West provincial government commissioned a forensic report which recommended legal action against Mononela and former chief financial officer Segomotso Phatudi, who has since taken up new employment in Limpopo.
Mahlangu has again failed to answer questions sent to her following an order by the National Treasury to her office to return R158.1m to the National Revenue Fund (NRF) after their failure to spend their conditional grants.
Both Mahlangu and Mononela have ignored emails sent to them for comment since last week. Earlier, they also dodged commenting on the recommendations of the forensic report.
Mononela and Phatudi invested R150m with VBS in February and March this year. Of this, R100m was a conditional grant from the national government for regional bulk infrastructure grants (RBIGs); R25m was an equitable share for free basic services and the other R25m was for a building fund.
Malijeng Ngqaleni, the National Treasury’s deputy director-general: intergovernmental relations, wrote to the municipality on November 5, asking it to return more than R158.1m to the National Revenue Fund (NRF) by today.
The municipality had failed to provide the National Treasury with its annual financial statements, prompting the Treasury to conclude that it had failed to spend its conditional grants for the 2017/18 financial year.
Ngqaleni ordered the municipality to deposit the funds into the Treasury’s bank account by today.
The Treasury told the Dr Ruth Mompati district municipality to make arrangements to return the unspent conditional grants.