PIC’s Dr Dan wants his life back
Ex-CEO seeks judicial review of findings on his role in Survé deal
Former Public Investment Corp (PIC) CEO Dan Matjila has lodged a court application for a review of the findings of the Mpati commission, which found him to have been “dishonest and without integrity” during his tenure.
In his application to the Pretoria high court last month, Matjila says the findings of the commission — appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa two years ago to probe impropriety at the PIC — had a “tremendous negative impact” on him in his personal and professional capacity.
“There can be no doubt that such findings, if inaccurate, or vitiated by illegality, irrationality, bad faith or malice, are susceptible to judicial review by a competent court,” says Matjila.
In its report issued in March the commission, chaired by retired judge Lex Mpati, made scathing findings against Matjila, questioning the decisions he made as head of Africa’s biggest asset manager and the biggest investor on the JSE.
In his court papers Matjila argues, among other things, that the commission was so “obsessed” with him as CEO that no other board member received similar attention, despite investment decisions being made by an investment committee.
At the heart of Matjila’s review application is the PIC’s controversial R4.3bn investment in Ayo Technology, a company chaired by Iqbal Survé.
The commission found that the evidence given by Matjila about this investment was “untrue” and the former CEO, in a letter dated December 4 2017 approving the transaction, had acted “improperly and in breach of the PIC’s processes”. Mpati further found that Matjila “secretly” made an irrevocable commitment by bypassing procedures.
Matjila argues that the December 4 letter was never raised with him during the hearings and that he was never afforded the opportunity to deal with it.
“The commission never afforded me the opportunity afterwards to be heard in respect of the letter before making the extremely harsh and prejudicial findings it did against me in respect of the letter.
"And it was never put to me that my evidence regarding the Ayo investment was untrue on the basis of the 4 December letter … The chairperson failed to address any questions to me in respect of the 4 December letter before publicly impugning my honesty and credibility,” says Matjila.
He says there is no rational basis for Mpati’s findings, describing them as fallacious. He says that the team involved in the Ayo transaction supported the investment.
Matjila argues in his court papers that he was deprived of the opportunity to defend his character and reputation.
“The commission has caused me the most anguish … and has all but destroyed my reputation in the financial services industry,” he says.
The Ayo deal came to the PIC in October 2017, when Survé offered the corporation the opportunity to invest while Ayo was still shopping around for money to fund the company’s intended listing on the JSE.
Ayo was scheduled to list twomonths later, and the Mpati commission said that as a result the deal was rushed. It further found there was material evidence of “nondisclosure of all reporting memoranda given to the [PIC] board, the Government Employees Pension Fund and parliament’s standing committee on public accounts regarding the approval of the deal”.
The PIC ended up subscribing to 99.8million shares in Ayo at R43 a share. The commission said there was no proper valuation to back the investment and therefore “the question remains as to whether the PIC subscribed for the shares at a fair and reasonable value”.
In his court papers Matjila rejects this view, saying a proper evaluation had indeed been conducted.
He argues that the commission erred in law in finding that he was not a fit and proper person to be a “key individual” and that it was never put to him that he had run a parallel investment process for Ayo, as Mpati suggests he did in the commission’s report.
The spokesperson in the presidency, Tyrone Seale, said the presidency would defend Matjila’s court action.