The Financial Services Board (FSB) has decided to terminate the employment of one of its senior officials, Rinata Goosen, who previously worked for an entity that enabled unqualified financial advisers to sell high-risk investments in Sharemax property syndications.
According to a statement published in Business Report yesterday, the FSB says Goosen is an exemplary employee, but the negative perceptions created by her association with Unlisted Securities South Africa (USSA) had led her and the FSB to agree that “the FSB’s operational requirements require the termination of her employment”.
Goosen, who has left the FSB already, was a manager in the FSB’s Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services enforcement department. She was previously a compliance officer for USSA, which was licensed to sell unlisted shares and appointed as its representatives advisers who were not licensed to do so but wanted to sell Sharemax.
Goosen’s involvement with USSA was highlighted in two recent rulings by the Ombud for Financial Services Providers, Noluntu Bam.
Last month, Bam ordered Sharemax, four of its directors, USSA and a broker to repay R580 000 to a widow who had invested in Sharemax’s Zambezi syndication, while in October last year she ordered a Pretoria broker to repay R800 000 to another widow who invested in Sharemax’s The Villa.
In her rulings, Bam said Sharemax was a “Ponzi scheme”, that USSA and Sharemax did not operate at arm’s length, and that USSA essentially “hired out its licence” in return for a fee.