Johannesburg — South African parties demanded on Friday investigations into claims that the leader of the leftist opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) took bribes as part of a $130 million bank scandal.
The claims emerged as the former chairman of VBS Mutual Bank was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday on multiple counts of fraud, racketeering, money laundering and theft.
The bank collapsed in 2018 after three years of looting by executives and politicians in a scandal dubbed “the great bank heist”.
Tshifhiwa Matodzi was sentenced by the Pretoria High Court after entering into a plea deal with prosecutors.
The Daily Maverick news site carried a copy of Matodzi’s affidavit, reporting that he claimed that the leader of the radical EFF, Julius Malema, and his deputy Floyd Shivambu had received R16 million ($890 million today) in “stolen VBS funds”.
The EFF would not comment on the allegations. It has previously denied any involvement in the VBS bank scandal.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) strongly condemns the unlawful leaking of an affidavit in the VBS case pic.twitter.com/LXl6HZuNrg
— NPASouthAfrica (@NPA_Prosecutes) July 12, 2024
In a statement on Friday, the centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA) demanded police investigate Malema and Shivambu, against whom it had laid charges in 2018 over the VBS affair.
The small centre-right ActionSA also demanded a fresh investigation into the duo. The Afrikaans rights group, AfriForum, said it would lay criminal charges against them.
In the leaked document, Matodzi also accused the former treasury director-general Dondo Mogajane and provincial officials of the ruling ANC party of involvement in the VBS scandal.
A 2018 report by the South African Reserve Bank detailed how $130 million (112 million euros) was stolen from VBS over three years by 53 individuals, including executives and politicians.
The customers who lost their savings in the plunder of the bank were mainly poor rural depositors, including pensioners, the report said.
Journalist Pauli Van Wyk, who lifted a lid on the alleged corruption at VBS, says sentenced former bank chairperson Tshifhiwa Matodzi was the kingpin in the bank’s 2018 collapse.
Van Wyk pinpoints that Matodzi didn’t make the affidavit without a strategy, which she believes was… pic.twitter.com/l28lJhpBtA
— Newzroom Afrika (@Newzroom405) July 12, 2024
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Source: AFP
Picture: X/@kiakili_
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