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Cape Town – African National Congress secretary general Ace Magashule has met with VBS Mutual Bank as the process of its curatorship by the SA Reserve Bank continues, the governing party told reporters on Wednesday.
This comes after the SARB announced that VBS Mutual Bank would be placed under curatorship. The Reserve Bank raised concern of a liquidity crisis after National Treasury instructed municipalities not to make withdrawals from the financial institution. Municipalities went on to draw over R1bn from the bank despite this.
Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago and Registrar of Banks Kuben Naidoo said on Sunday that the bank’s liquidity was in dire straits, warning that the bank would go bust if the Public Investment Corporation and Dyambeu Investments did not move to save it. Dyambeu Investments owns 26% of VBS Mutual Bank.
In 2016 the Presidency announced that VBS Mutual Bank would lend former president Jacob Zuma’s the money needed to comply with former public protector Thuli Madonsela’s remedial action order that he pay back the costs of Nkandla’s upgrades which were unrelated to security upgrades and constituted an “undue benefit”.
Following the party’s National Working Committee meeting held on Monday, the ANC released a statement in which it said the ANC NWC believed VBS Mutual Bank’s curatorship should seek to “resuscitate and assist VBS to function optimally within the requisite regulations”.
The statement said Magashule met with a VBS Mutual Bank delegation on Tuesday.
“Such engagements will be ongoing with a view to finding long lasting solution and further resolve the ongoing impasse consistent with an the ANC overriding commitment to fully transform the financial services sector as per the resolutions of the 54th National Conference,” the party said.
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