
Johannesburg - Parliament's portfolio committee on cooperative governance and traditional affairs will this week continue probing the dire state of municipalities that invested in VBS bank.
The committee began its hearings and visits to some of the municipalities on Friday. Limpopo had the highest number of municipalities that invested in the now-defunct VBS Mutual bank.
The bank, which was established years ago as a building society mutual bank, made headlines last year when a report compiled by Advocate Terry Motau, and commissioned by the SA Reserve Bank, found that deposits worth billions were looted by politicians and owners of the bank.
Many of the victims have not been able to recoup the monies they had entrusted with the bank. Some of those victims had been pensioners and family societies which banked with VBS for years.
The largest amounts lost belong to municipalities that deposited with the bank. There were a total of 15 municipalities that deposited their funds with VBS. This was even after warnings from National Treasury that it was illegal for municipalities to bank with mutual banks.