Johannesburg - A senior manager at the Financial Services Board (FSB) has resigned after accusing the organisation of being involved in a tender irregularity, maladministration, possible corruption and victimisation.
Mabulenyana Marweshe, the secretariat manager at the FSB, sent a grievance to the board and the Ministry of Finance with the list of allegations. He also laid a complaint with Corruption Watch over the matter.
The complaint comes just weeks after an executive at the FSB, Rosemary Hunter, took the FSB to the high court with allegations of a massive cover-up in the way orphaned pension funds had been closed - with as much as R10 billion of beneficiaries’ money potentially being unaccounted for.
Marweshe’s grievance relates to the awarding of an internal audit tender, which was awarded to auditing firm SekelaXabiso outside of the validity period.
Marweshe claims everything was then done by executives at the FSB to hide this fact.
Marweshe said in his letter that FSB chief executive Dube Tshidi, former FSB chief financial officer Roy Harichunder and audit and licensing committee chairman Jabu Mogadime convened a meeting “where they agreed not to disclose to the FSB audit committee that the validity period regarding the tender had expired”.
“Two days before the special FSB audit committee meeting, I had a telephone conversation with Harichunder. He expressed disappointment and embarrassment that the bid had been awarded out of the validity period and said he would prepare a report for the audit committee, which he never did,” Marweshe said.
He added that he later heard that the tender had been approved.
He called Harichunder to find out what had happened. The conversation was recorded. In it, a voice said to be that of Harichunder said they didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that it had passed the validity period.
“That would have created a lot of embarrassment for the FSB and a lot of cost and time we didn’t have. So after a lot of discussion with the chief executive and chair of the audit committee we would let sleeping dogs lie,” he can be heard saying.
Marweshe said he faced victimisation in the workplace after reporting what had happened, particularly by Tshidi, and his MBA study loan terminated.
FSB spokeswoman Tembisa Marele rejected allegations of any breach of improper tender activity and claims of victimisation.
@AngeliqueSerrao
THE STAR