A looter continual

Hawks were asked to investigate plunder of fund years ago, but are still unable to answer questions about it

The Financial Services Board (FSB) has placed the Bosele National Provident Fund — whose members include preschool teachers, doctors’ assistants and even members of the United Christian Democratic Party — under curatorship.

Early in February, the high court in Mahikeng approved the regulator’s application to appoint Tony Tshivhase and Malcolm Campbell as joint curators to run the fund.

“An on-site visit to the fund was conducted in August 2017, and the matters emanating from this on-site visit formed the basis for the application to place the fund under curatorship,” says Corlia Buitendag, head of pension surveillance & enforcement at the FSB.

The on-site visit found serious lapses in governance at the fund, the FSB says.

“The visit revealed several matters that were prejudicial to members’ interests in the fund, and the [pension funds] registrar considered that the board of trustees was not adequately or appropriately addressing them, and that curators needed to be appointed to protect members’ interests,” says Buitendag.

But what is concerning is that the curatorship comes nearly six years after the FSB reported senior executives of Kopano Employee Benefits (KEB), a subsidiary of trade union federation Cosatu’s investment arm, and certain other individuals to the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks) for plundering more than R120m from the provident fund.

The financial services regulator also withdrew KEB’S licence to administer retirement funds at the time. This followed a damning report arising from an inspection of the operations of Kopano ke Matla — Cosatu’s investment arm — and Westside Trading, a consulting company Bosele paid to trace beneficiaries.

Kopano was irregularly appointed as Bosele’s administrator, and minutes were fabricated to make its appointment appear legitimate, according to the report.

Inspectors recommended that the companies, and certain key individuals working for them, be investigated for “unusual and suspicious transactions and payments”, including R123m paid to companies within the Kopano group, with more than R57m ending up with top Kopano executives. A Kopano executive then paid R6.9m of Bosele’s own money to the fund’s