Axe council officials involved in VBS ‘heist’ – DA

The Democratic Alliance is calling on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Zweli Mkhize to instruct local councils to remove municipal managers and chief financial officers who “plundered public money in the VBS heist”.

To date, not one official had been held accountable for these illegal actions involving “rampant looting and large-scale corruption at VBS Mutual Bank”, DA spokesperson Kevin Mileham said.

He said the opposition party would ask Mkhize to take firm steps to ensure the corrupt officials did not get away with what was essentially theft from the public purse.

He said the DA had already laid criminal charges against the municipal managers and chief financial officers and would now seek to have the minister issue a directive to the municipalities to initiate internal disciplinary processes.

“This feeding frenzy at the VBS trough was empowered by a number of municipalities which illegally deposited funds with VBS in contravention of the Municipal Finance Management Act.

“It is unlikely these funds, amounting to more than R1.5 billion spread across 15 municipalities in Limpopo, Gauteng and North West, will be recovered. This means service delivery will be severely impaired,” he said.

Media reports yesterday revealed that whenever VBS faced a liquidity crunch, it would pressure municipal officials to make deposits.

This was supported by evidence in the possession of the DA that in February this year, six months after National Treasury instructed municipalities not to invest or deposit funds in VBS, certain municipalities were still opening new accounts at the bank, he said. – ANA