Government ministers have changed their minds about referring the forensic report on the affairs of the Land Bank to the police.
According to Cabinet spokesperson Themba Maseko, they did so after hearing that a number of board members and senior executives of the bank had challenged statements in the report.
”The Cabinet resolved that this decision would be rescinded pending further internal investigations by the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs,” he said.
He explained that the forensic report said that some decisions on loan applications were made by bank executives, without reference to the board, but the board and the executives have now argued that these decisions did, in fact, go before the board.
”All these issues are to be followed up, and dealt with as effectively as possible,” Maseko told a media briefing on Thursday. ”If we exhaust the processes and still find that there is fraud, the matter will be forwarded to the police.”
He declined to say which members of the board or executives of the bank had come forward with the new information.
”We want to make sure that the police are given a complete report of what happened at the bank,” he said.
Land Bank officials are alleged to have siphoned off more than R2-billion meant for farmers, to fund their close friends’ and associates’ ventures. The money was used for luxury golf estates, a sugar mill, equestrian estates and residential developments.
The fraud was revealed in a forensic audit by Deloitte, which was handed to the Cabinet last month by the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Lulu Xingwana.
The Cabinet then called for the Land Bank board to be fired and for criminal charges to be brought against almost the entire top management implicated in the investigation. — I-Net Bridge