WHAT WERE THEY THINKING - IF THEY WERE?

Last year a group of discovered that the Board of Trustees of a certain pension fund were busy mismanaging, allocating contracts to unqualified people, living a life of luxury at the expense of members of the fund, took decisions at meetings other than board meetings and signed resolutions purporting to have taken them at BOT – ( Board of Trustee) meetings, excluded the administrators from the meetings, signed bank application documents to open a banking account, then denying that those were their signatures, paid themselves very hefty allowances that I will detail herein. they did all this and claimed that they were prudent in managing the fund…..

An investigation revealed that they: received between R 251 000.00 and R112 000.000 (R = rands) multiply that by at least 5 to obtain the rupee equivalent) over a period of seven months.

After we uncovered these criminal acts the BOT sought to justify their actions and claim that they were the victims of a conspiracy. The monies paid out to them is documented and it leads right to their personal banking accounts.

We further discovered that the PEO – Principal executive Officer – similar to the CEO had applied for a credit card with a credit value of R 75 000.00 and that he claimed traveling expenses to the value of R 80 000.00 over the same period described above.

We took the following measures:

The PEO is charged with fraud – he is on the run now – we anticipate his arrest will follow very shortly

The BOT members are to be dismissed without any further ado

They too will be subject to criminal charges

A different BOT will be elected.

The rules of the fund have to be amended to prevent similar incidents from occurring

The amendments will include various safe guards that are not found in the current rules.

Members are to be found in every municipality in the country and the fund has a value of approximately R1b

We are currently exploring what measures we should take to recover monies lost through any action taken by the BOT.

This matter will be raised in the National Parliament to the relevant Minister who must provide answers to the questions posed.

Several prominent people have been asked for comment.

Ok that’s what happened. Those are some of the actions we took.

Whatever opinion you may express if it contradicts the measures we took will not change those… I would welcome suggestions as to what other measures we should consider….

I am trying to understand whether or not these people thought they could commit such acts and not be caught….especially when there are people like us? Astonishing to say the least.