Reserve Bank resists pressure to save VBS
No option but to apply for liquidation, says senior official, as the NPA considers racketeering charges
The Reserve Bank has pushed back on political pressure to save VBS Mutual Bank, which collapsed in one of the country’s worst corporate fraud scandals, with directors stealing about R2bn. A day after President Cyril Ramaphosa told parliament that the VBS model should be raised from the ashes, the central bank’s deputy governor and Prudential Authority CEO Kuben Naidoo said on Wednesday there was no option but to apply for the liquidation of VBS once it became clear that it was insolvent. EFF MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi on Wednesday accused the Bank of being hell-bent on killing VBS, saying it had diverted from its previous practice of trying to save troubled lenders. Yunus Carrim, the chair of parliament’s standing committee on finance, said in October that every attempt should be made to rescue the mutual bank and that its disappearance would be a setback for transformation in the sector. VBS, set up in the former Venda homeland, made national headlines in 2016 when it lent former presiden...
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