On the first day of his highly anticipated testimony at public hearings into governance issues at the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), former CEO Dan Matjila had to fend off fresh allegations that he had unduly benefited from a loan extended by the corruption-hit VBS Bank.
UDM leader Bantu Holomisa circulated a letter on Monday that he had written to the PIC commission’s evidence leader, advocate Jannie Lubbe, in which he claimed he had a forensic report prepared for the state-owned asset manager which accuses Matjila of improperly benefiting from a loan of R2.45m extended by the collapsed VBS Mutual Bank.
Matjila denied any wrongdoing on Monday.
"I have never seen such a report or any documentation in connection with it but it is absolutely untrue," he told Business Day on the sidelines of the judicial commission of inquiry.
The report, dated April 15, 2019, was prepared by Nexus Forensic Services, a Pretoria- based firm. The PIC confirmed the authenticity of the forensic report on Tuesday morning.
Advocate Francois Labuschagne, a partner at Nexus Forensics Services, declined to comment, citing confidentiality agreements.
VBS collapsed in 2018 after more than 50 people, including executives and politicians, looted nearly R2bn from the small, Limpopo-based lender.
It is not the first time Holomisa is accusing Matjila of misconduct. A year ago, he asked the Treasury to suspend and investigate him over allegations of misuse of funds and careless investment decisions.
In October 2018, President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered an investigation to scrutinise allegations of governance failures at the PIC, which manages more than R2-trillion in government employees’ pension money.
As a former CEO who ran the show between 2014 and 2018, Matjila’s is pivotal to the inquiry headed by judge Lex Mpati. It has heard from several people who alleged that Matjila had played a key role in approving questionable deals.
Though he has previously denied any wrongdoing, he has yet to respond to direct questions about his tenure at the asset manager.
On Monday, he spent a portion of his first day highlighting the risks of appointing a deputy finance minister as the chair of the PIC, which is owned by the government.
Matjila said that the role of the chair in relation to investments was deliberately limited because the PIC is the major investor in government bonds and in debt issued by state-owned entities (SOEs) such as Eskom.
As part of the job, the chair is obliged to act in the best interest of the PIC but the chair also owes their loyalty to the government as its deputy finance minister, Matjila said. "The chairperson presides over full board meetings of the PIC and is not a member of any other board committee, including the investment committee. But the chairperson’s involvement in investments is limited to transactions that are above the delegated authority of the investment committee when these transactions are recommended to the board," he said in his prepared statement to the commission
When asked by commissioner Emmanuel Lediga whether there had been any political interference at the PIC when it came to granting Eskom an emergency loan of R5bn in 2018, Matjila simply replied "absolutely not."
The loan was described as an emergency measure because Eskom would not have been able to pay salaries for the month of March had the funds not been forthcoming in early April.
Update: July 9 2018
This story has been updated to reflect that the PIC confirmed the authenticity of the Nexus Forensic Services report.
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