R750 000 in church funds have gone missing but anti- apartheid activist Rev Eddie Leeuw denies he benefited
THE Reverend Eddie Leeuw, one of the leading church activists of the Eighties and current director of Eastern Cape Peace Initiative, has become embroiled in a R750 000 church fund fraud scandal.
The announcement of the police investigation this week comes hot on the heels of revelations that Leeuw misappropriated R50 000 from the East London development agency, Afesis-corplan.
According to documents in the Weekly Mail & Guardian’s possession, Leeuw has confessed to raising a bond of R50 000 for his personal use on an East London building purchased by the Afesis Trust in 1991. The College Road building was registered in his name in order to protect the property from possible expropriation by the apartheid authorities.
When the trust tried to sell the building earlier this year, it discovered that Leeuw had raised the bond for his own benefit.
Afesis-corplan says it is planning to lay criminal and civil charges against Leeuw.
In the church funds scandal, it is alleged that the R750 000 belonging to the Stockenstroom congregation of the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Sendingkerk, now the Uniting Reform Church, went missing in 1992.
“We’ve got a case we’re busy investigating,” Colonel Frank Vos told Sapa this week.
He said the congregation had invested its funds with Sanlam and Leeuw allegedly withdrew the funds and reinvested them with an independent broker, Graham
Vos said Leeuw was not entitled to withdraw the funds.
Leeuw has flatly denied any allegations of wrongdoing, saying he did not personally benefit.
The Reverend Murphy Maart of the Queenstown Uniting Reform Church confirmed the disappearance of the funds.
He said the Stockenstroom church council could not find any reference in the council minutes to a decision to move the funds in order to reinvest them.
Maart said the congregation had had funds invested with Sanlam and interest was paid into accounts with Allied Bank in King William’s Town and Standard Bank in Fort
Last year the congregation found the funds had
“At Allied Bank there was nothing, at Sanlam there was nothing, and at Fort Beaufort there was only R400,” he
Maart said the congregation raised the money from the sale of land in the former Ciskei.
Part of the proceeds were spent on a farm, Friemersheim, near Georgkei.
Leeuw said the reinvestment of the Stockenstroom funds was done after a decision by the church council, which he chaired at the time. “During the time I was chair there were no complaints,” he said.