PARLIAMENT – Finance Minister Tito Mboweni on Tuesday condemned auditing firm KPMG for signing off on the financial statements of failed VBS Mutual Bank even though, according to a South African Reserve Bank report, it was clear that it had a shortfall of about R1 billion.
“When you have a big auditing firm failing us in the manner that one has, that is a serious concern,” Mboweni told Parliament’s standing committee on finance.
“In this case I think we were failed by both the internal auditors and the external auditors. It seemed to have been part of the heist.”
According to the report authored by Advocate Terry Motau, former KPMG partner Sipho Malaba was rewarded R28 million by those who plundered VBS’s coffers.
Mboweni, who served as governor of the SARB for ten years, suggested that the central bank should look at extending its onsite inspections at major banks to smaller banks to prevent a repeat of abuses such as those detailed at VBS.
“The central bank had a capacity for onsite inspection, at some of the big banks we had onsite inspectors. Looking overall at the experience … the central bank has to be very mindful of…
