Mboweni to address VBS saga, beneficiaries facing Sars audits
SIYABONGA MKHWANAZI
The thing regulators can hope for is that law enforcement agencies move with speed to deal with the robbery. The political parties need to move with speed to deal with their members who were found wanting
NEW Finance Minister Tito Mboweni has promised to outline a detailed response to the VBS Mutual Bank fallout in his Medium-term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) next week in Parliament.
But the SA Revenue Service is also hot on the heels of those who benefited from the VBS looting with, acting Sars boss Mark Kingon telling MPs it is also investigating if those people declared their taxes.
MPs also said they want to deal with the VBS scandal next month where they will invite the South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) and National Treasury.
Kingon told the standing committee on finance yesterday he wants his “pound of flesh” from those who benefited from VBS.
He said he received the report the day before it was made public by the Sarb.
In its investigation, it wanted to find out if people declared taxes on the benefits they received from VBS.
Kingon said he was doing this in the strictest confidentiality and will do everything by the book.
Mboweni also said he will address the matter next week.
“On VBS, we are going to have a lot to say next week in the MTBPS. Many things went wrong there,” said Mboweni.
“The thing regulators can hope for is that law enforcement agencies move with speed to deal with the robbery. The political parties need to move with speed to deal with their members who were found wanting.
“A huge amount of trust is put on internal and external auditors. There is no way staff at Sarb will be everywhere. With larger institutions the central bank used to have onsite inspections. In this case we were failed by both internal and external auditors in cahoots (with criminals),” said Mboweni. “If you have large auditing firms failing us it is an issue of concern,” he said.
KPMG fired its former partner Sipho Malaba for allegedly benefiting from VBS. Malaba has threatened to take the Sarb report on review.
KPMG has been linked to several scandals in the past year, leading to it losing huge businesses from the state and private sector.
David Maynier of the DA said the scandal would not have come to light if his colleague Kevin Mileham had not asked the question in Parliament on the municipalities depositing their money in VBS. This was against National Treasury regulations and guidelines for municipalities to put more than R1.5 billion there.
Dikeledi Mahlangu of the ANC said the municipalities did not take National Treasury seriously when they went to VBS which was against policy.