BusinessLive reports that whistle-blower turned activist Rosemary Hunter has lost her legal battle to force the pension funds’ watchdog to do more work investigating the closure of dormant pension funds.  

The case relates to a project by the then Financial Services Board (FSB), which saw the cancellation of more than 4,600 dormant retirement funds between January 2007 and December 2013 and the transfer of all their assets to unclaimed benefits funds.  In September 2017, the Financial Services Sector Authority (FSCA) indicated that there were R42bn unclaimed benefits in SA.  These funds are administered by various private and public sector funds.  Hunter approached the Constitutional Court for leave to appeal earlier judgments made by the High Court in Pretoria and the Supreme Court of Appeal in a bid to compel the FSCA to do more investigations into the funds cancellation project.  Five of the eight judges ruled against her on the basis that the FSCA had conducted enough investigations.  The three other judges disagreed, saying:  "There were many mistakes made in the course of the project.  There are potentially hundreds of errors that will go undetected without further investigation."  Pressured by noise created by Hunter’s case, financial services group Liberty in August ordered the reinstatement of 130 funds, which had about R100m in assets and 3,000 beneficiaries when they were cancelled.  "That’s just the tip of the iceberg.  I’m sure there are many other hundreds of millions [of unclaimed funds] there," Hunter said.

• Read this report by Londiwe Buthelezi in full at BusinessLive
• Read too, FSB whistleblower’s legal challenge hits the end of the road, at Moneyweb

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