SA’s financial market regulator raided the Cape Town offices of Iqbal Survé’s Sekunjalo Investment Holdings on Wednesday, the latest phase in a seven-month long investigation into allegations of manipulation in trading in Sekunjalo's two subsidiaries.
In July Survé told journalists that it was he who had asked the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) regulator to investigate trading in the shares of Ayo Technology Solutions and its top top shareholder African Equity Empowerment Investments.
The FSCA, which first announced the investigation in March, said the high court in Cape Town had granted the search-and-seizure order allowing them to conduct the raid under the supervision of an independent attorney.
The FSCA’s raid is the latest in a number of high-profile developments involving Ayo, which was listed in December 2017. The Public Investment Corporation (PIC), which manages R2-trillion of investments largely on behalf of government employees, paid R4.3bn for a 29% stake in Ayo equivalent to R43 a share. On Wednesday Ayo was trading at R5.60 having declined steadily in low-volume trade from a high of R24 in January. The company is currently valued at R1.9bn.
The investment by the PIC, which also provided more than R1bn in funding to Sekunjalo when it bought control of Independent Media in 2013, has been put under the spotlight by the Mpati commission of inquiry into the PIC under the leadership of Dan Matjila. Matjila retired from the PIC in late 2018.
During the raid Survé suggested to Independent Media journalists that minister of public enterprises Pravin Gordhan and President Cyril Ramaphosa were behind the raid. He also claimed that Abel Sithole, who is principal executive officer at the Government Employees Pension Fund and has been critical of the investments in the PIC under Matjila, was instrumental in the search and seizure.
In a video clip carried on the Independent Media website, Survé can be heard telling the FSCA agents that the raid is intended to “get information we [Independent Media] have on Pravin Gordhan and the president and which my reporters are about to publish this weekend”.
In a statement issued late on Wednesday Survé said: “These are classic intimidation tactics carried out by an increasingly desperate cohort of politically entrenched cronies whose pockets are intrinsically linked to wholesale looting and corruption of state coffers.”
The presidency said the FSCA was a statutory body mandated to investigate and take enforcement action in cases of market abuse, and this was the background against which it understood Wednesday’s action.
“Should Mr Survé have information that suggests any improper act or undue influence by any person on the FSCA, we urge that he reports such to the law enforcement agencies for appropriate action,” presidency spokesperson Khusela Diko said.
The PIC, Gordhan and Ramaphosa could not be reached for comment.
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