If you wonder why most of Africa after the end of white rule wallows in corruption, poverty and tyranny, yet another lesson was provided recently by the collapse of the VBS Mutual Bank, hailed as the first bank in South Africa to be run exclusively by Africans—black Africans, that is.
An official inquiry set up by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) has found that: “…its owners stole all the cash and bribed government and local government officials into depositing money in the operation,” as the New Observer reports. Further,
…the SARB report found that R1,894,923,674 (US$ 130 million) was transferred from the Bank to fifty three individuals between 15 March 2015 and 17 June 2018. According to the report, R16,148,569 (US$1.09 million) went to Brian Shivambu, younger brother of the anti-white Economic Freedom Fighter senior politician Floyd Shivambu.
News24 South Africa comments on the recommendation that at least 50 persons be prosecuted:
This includes the bank’s former executives and their associates, shareholder executives, politicians and their relatives and auditors who signed off on the bank’s “fraudulent” financials. The criminal charges should stem from evidence of fraud, corruption and bribery perpetrated by the bank’s leadership and public officials with whom they were in cahoots.
Not only that, the monies accreted by these crooks came from local municipalities controlled by, you guessed it, the African National Congress (ANC), the gang of communist bandits that passes for a government in South Africa. Senior ANC officials were the instigators in fleecing the municipalities, that is, robbing the taxpayers, and channeling the loot to the VBS bank.
The SARB report [available here], entitled “The Great Bank Heist”, makes fascinating reading to the extent that it makes the Mafia look like schoolboy amateurs. The report contains chapters with delicious titles such as “The Extent of the Looting” and “The Methods of Looting and Pillaging”. And, as news24 South Africa reports:
Motau [the main author of the SARB report] also recommends that VBS be wound up (liquidated), as he does not believe there is any prospect of saving it.
“It is corrupt and rotten to the core. Indeed, there is hardly a person in its employ in any position of authority who is not, in some way or the other, complicit.”
Motau found there was “widescale looting and pillaging of the monies placed on deposit at VBS”.
However, the author of the SARB report was not without a sense of irony; the first page begins thus:
More than forty years ago the most daring heist in South Africa’s banking history took place. A group of industrious thieves, led by the elusive Mister Nightingale, skillfully tunneled
their way some twenty -one meters underground into the vault of the Standard Bank in Krugersdorp. The bold bank robbers withdrew the princely sum of R400 000. They disappeared with the loot and no arrests were ever made.
I have, for the past five months, investigated the sorry affairs of the VBS Mutual Bank. My report will reveal that the perpetrators of the heist at VBS made away with almost R2 billion. And they certainly did not put in anything like the hard work and effort of Mister Nightingale and his team.
I trust that, in this case, arrests will be made.
Rebel Yell