Tokyo: a scam or a smear?
● While many have dismissed businessman Tokyo Sexwale’s claims of the theft of billions intended for SA’s upliftment as unhinged, deputy minister of state security Zizi Kodwa says the former Gauteng premier may be an unwitting “instrument” in a smear campaign against President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Kodwa said yesterday the timing of Sexwale’s claims bore the hallmarks of an intelligence-driven operation. He said security operatives had investigated a similar scam, going by the name Metro Grant Holdings, that had approached former president Jacob Zuma with offers of money to unlock development about six years ago.
“The agencies investigated that and found it was a scam. They recommended that the government distance itself, including all nine premiers and local municipalities,” Kodwa said.
“Their [the scammers’] target is always local government and traditional councils with offers of money for mega projects, because they know local governments need money for projects. Their modus operandi is getting [into] relations with someone they can use as a contact point with the president or the finance minister, and claim to be philanthropists who can make the country’s problems disappear.
“They arrive in a country and profile a prominent person as a proxy for access to leadership of that particular country … so that when they are exposed they can say they’ve been talking to a president.
“They’ve got the intelligence capacity to profile individuals who they can use and with him [Sexwale] they found a perfect person with the right credentials.”
Kodwa said the timing of Sexwale’s claims were potentially dangerous for SA, as the country’s economic struggles laid the perfect ground for civil instability.
“The timing of his [Sexwale’s] utterances is the work of intelligence, because in a country where you’ve got serious challenges and protests over fees must fall, and you don’t have money … you
create a perception in public that you’ve got an uncaring government. There’s this philanthropist who wants to make your problems disappear, and your government is not responding. The president is not returning messages, to create a perception of a president who is uncaring when there is money to solve the country’s problems.”
Kodwa said past investigations found that Metro Grant Holdings had planted “information peddlers” in some provinces, including Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal, and that this had led to protests in those areas in 2014. “That’s how dangerous these scams are, they’ve got a serious risk,” he said.
But the Institute for Security Studies’ Gareth Newham said he would be surprised if Sexwale’s claims led to any instability. “I think most people know it’s an unsubstantiated allegation, and there’s no evidence behind it,” he said.
Sexwale grabbed the headlines last weekend when he claimed in a television interview that money was stolen from a fund that could have bankrolled the resurrection of SA’s state-owned enterprises, paid fees for students who could not afford higher education, funded bullet trains, and increased the Covid-19 relief grant for the unemployed from R350 to R3,000.
The money, he claimed, belonged to a wealthy, unnamed family represented by a Godwin Webb in SA and Singapore citizen Chark Leong Boey, who had appointed him to manage the fund in SA. To date, Sexwale has refused to quantify the amount, saying only it contains 12 zeroes, signifying it could be in the trillions.
The only problem was that Ramaphosa, finance minister Tito Mboweni and reserve bank governor Lesetja Kganyago had all ignored his offers to assist, he said.
On Monday, the National Treasury and the Reserve Bank issued a statement saying Sexwale could be the victim of a scam.
“National Treasury and the SARB have previously received correspondence from Mr Sexwale and many others that alleges that billions of rands have been stolen from a fund that has been referred to as the ‘White Spiritual Boy Trust’, and which was set up by a foreign donor,” they said.
“It is further alleged that there are trillions of dollars in the said fund and that, inter alia, a certain Mr Godwin Erin Webb was its mandated representative in South Africa. On investigation, the SARB can confirm that it had no record of the existence of the said fund.
“It should be noted that Mr Sexwale is not the first prominent person acting on behalf of a Mr Webb or an unknown donor, for such funds, and such requests can be traced to many years before 2016.”
On Thursday, Sexwale spent more than two hours trying to convince the media that the fund existed. He produced a stack of documents he said proved his case. Within a day, these documents were revealed to be part of a well-known, elaborate global scam.
Besides being evasive about the amount, Sexwale also refused to share a case number for the criminal complaint he said he had laid over the alleged missing money, and would not divulge how much he stood to earn as fees for his management of the fund.
Sexwale could not be reached for comment. Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation spokesperson Col Katlego Mogale confirmed Sexwale had laid a formal criminal complaint “a few weeks ago”, but she also could not produce a case number for the investigation.