City Press reports that one of SA’s biggest unions was used as a conduit to launder about R65 million in pensions allegedly plundered from impoverished orphans of deceased mineworkers.  

Bongani Mhlanga, the erstwhile owner of financial services group Mvunonala, allegedly used the SA Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) as a conduit to move pension funds into his family’s trust and a company owned by him.  Details of the money laundering web are contained in a hard-hitting set of findings by forensic investigations firm SekelaXabiso Chartered Accountants.  In November 2017 a Satawu interim task team commissioned the firm to look into the union’s finances for the period January 2012 to May 2015.  This followed the discovery of suspicious transactions that had the hallmarks of “insider trading, money laundering, theft, fraud and corruption”.  SekelaXabiso’s report shows that R65 million from the Bophelo Beneficiary Fund was transferred into Satawu’s investment arm, Bashumi Investment Holdings.  Bank statements seen by the firm’s investigators reveal that Bashumi later transferred R44.5 million to two entities which were under Mhlanga’s direct control.  The report shows that Bashumi had received a total of R77.9 million.  All the money was later paid to other companies, including the Gasela Family Trust and Nzalo Afrika.  The Mvunonala Group crashed in March last year after VBS Mutual Bank was placed under curatorship by the SA Reserve Bank.  VBS was owned by Vele Investments, which had acquired Mvunonala for about R500 million in September 2017.

• Read the full original of Sipho Masondo’s report on this story at City Press

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