A leaked public protector provisional report into apartheid-era loans to Absa could be used for nefarious purposes, warns SA’s former public protector Thuli Madonsela. Speaking at the Cape Town Press Club on Monday, Madonsela refused to comment on whether the recommendations in the report were hers. The report recommends that Absa pay back R2.25bn for an unlawful apartheid-era bailout. The money relates to the bank’s acquisition of Bankorp, which received financial assistance from the South African Reserve Bank between 1985 and 1991. It continued until 1995, after it was acquired by Absa in 1992. While an investigation by Judge Dennis Davis in 2000 found Absa had paid for the continued assistance in the purchase price, the CIEX report, on which the public protector relied, found that billions were recoverable from Absa. In 1997, the state asked CIEX, a UK-based asset recovery agency headed by retired British intelligence officer Michael Oatley, to investigate apartheid-era economic ...
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