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Auditor testifies in complex Saambou corruption case PDF Print
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
The Pretoria High Court has begun to hear details of how senior managers at Saambou Bank are said to have used corrupt loans from the bank to buy shares at Saambou Holdings while recklessly exposing their employer to the risk of bad debt. Charles Edwards, Saambou's former director for personal banking, and Gerhardus De Clercq, who was general manager of group finance and later of strategic alliances at the bank, face 10 charges of fraud, one of theft and two of contravening the Companies Act, involving a total of about R640 million.

They are also accused of conspiring with former Saambou CEO Johan Myburgh, who died of cancer last December, to prevent information on the shaky financial condition of the bank from being disclosed to shareholders and depositors. Saambou was South Africa's seventh largest bank before its collapse in 2002 after a run on the bank that saw depositors withdraw more than R1 billion of their savings.
KPMG auditor Johan van der Walt, who also testified at the corruption trial of Schabir Shaik, presented a massive 7-volume, 6 000-page forensic report to the court. The report is expected to back up the State’s claim that Edwards, De Clerq and Myburgh conducted the bank’s business in a reckless manner, concealed or made false entries in the bank’s financial records and statements and corruptly helped themselves to illegal loans.

The chief prosecutor in the case, Daniel Derfling, warned in his opening statement that the trial involved matters of extreme financial complexity that will only be understood once the auditor’s complete report has been heard and considered. This, he said, could take months.

Edwards and de Clercq have pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Edwards gave no explanation for his plea, while De Clercq filed a statement denying any wrongdoing and arguing that he was only doing his job and following the instructions of his superiors. The trial continues before Judge Willie Van der Merwe.

By Jacob Nthoiwa
Consultingweb Journalist
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