Details emerge of how former ANCYL leader took huge VBS loans he never repaid
A Daily Maverick investigation suggests the bank had an attitude towards loans that other banks would find odd, especially when it came to Kabelo Matsepe.
VBS Bank branding. Picture: Moneyweb
Further details on the spending of an alleged key individual in the looting saga of VBS Mutual Bank have emerged on Friday in a Scorpio investigative report published in Daily Maverick.
Reporter Pauli van Wyk revealed that, from the R35.4 million that former ANCYL Limpopo leader Kabelo Matsepe and his companies allegedly received from the bank, he bought a top-of-the-range Range Rover and a house in Centurion.
Despite benefiting massively and apparently still owing the full amount on the car, he even went as far as to claim even more millions from the bank after it was liquidated, supposedly as “commissions” for his work on facilitating investments into VBS. Aside from the fact that an independent investigation suggested his work on getting municipalities to deposit funds with VBS was illegal, the claim was reportedly rejected due to improper filing.
Last year, an independent report into the collapse of VBS named 50 people and entities that “gratuitously” received cash from the mutual bank over a three-year period commencing from March 2015.
Matsepe’s name featured prominently. At the time, he threatened major legal action against the Reserve Bank-commissioned report authored by Advocate Terry Motau, but that has not materialised.
Motau’s explosive report found that there was “wide-scale looting and pillaging of the [money] placed on deposit at VBS”.
The nearly R2 billion looted included clients’ life savings and deposits as well as millions of rands deposited by municipalities, even though the Public Finance Management Act does not permit depositing public funds into a mutual bank. The report said the deposits were made in exchange for bribes, which Matsepe has been accused of playing a central role in facilitating.
According to Daily Maverick, among several other things, Matsepe was given “finance” from the bank for his Range Rover to the tune of nearly R2.4 million, and never paid instalments.
The Reserve Bank placed VBS under curatorship in March after it was found to be facing a liquidity crisis.
To read the full details of the report, click here.
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