Time running out for VBS victims to claim their money

VICTIMS of the VBS Mutual Bank “hesist”, who had invested up to R100 000, are left with a little over three months to claim their money.

Qualifying individuals and societies can redeem their money at any Nedbank branch before July 8, 2021.

This is according to VBS liquidator Anoosh Rooplal who spoke at a joint meeting with Nedbank at the South African Reserve Bank last week.

Rooplah said: “July 18 is the date when the agreement between the liquidator, the Prudential Authority and Nedbank is due to end.

“In terms of this agreement, which was concluded in 2018, depositors were guaranteed up to R100 000 and had three years to collect their money.”

She added that the intention was to avoid that the vulnerable depositors suffer a financial loss as a result of the brazen looting.

Rooplah said the process of transferring the money to individual depositors was a very successful exercise and easy.

“Without the intervention of the Reserve Bank, these depositors would still be out of pocket for their funds. Of the original 18 300 deposit accounts, 17 750 have been transferred to Nedbank, at a value of R260 million, and 98% of the R260m has been activated and collected by depositors in terms of value,” she said.

However, she said a decision had been taken to close 3 773 accounts with balances of R100 or less.

She said those accounts amounted to approximately R100 000 and were closed from a cost and administrative perspective.

Depositors can still claim their funds from Nedbank up until July 8, according to Rooplal.

The final tranche of qualifying accounts was recently transferred to Nedbank and constituted 370 accounts amounting to approximately R3.7m in value.

In order to qualify for the claim, depositors who are South African citizens must provide their identity documents or cards, while stokvels, clubs and burial societies should provide their pro-forma founding statement or resolution document.

Rooplal confirmed that claims were received from VBS retail and institutional creditors who were owed more than R100 000 during the first and second round of meetings held with creditors.

“The process to determine the validity of creditors’ claims has been largely completed by the liquidator. Communication has been sent to the Master of the High Court as well as to those affected creditors regarding their reduced or expunged claims as per the Insolvency Act 32 of 1916.”

The VBS bank collapsed in 2018 after brazen looting and, according to a VBS report compiled by advocate Terry Motau on behalf of Reserve Bank, the mutual bank collapsed after being looted of R2.3 billion by a group who included the mutual bank’s executives, politicians and municipal officials.

They had funnelled the savings and investments of the mainly poor people of Vhembe in Limpopo into their personal bank accounts between 2015 and 2018.

Eight suspects, including ANC Limpopo treasurer, Danny Msiza, and chairperson of the VBS board, Tshifhiwa Matodzi, were arrested and their trial resumes in August.