The chair of parliament’s standing committee on finance, Yunus Carrim, says every attempt should be made to rescue VBS Mutual Bank under a new “effective leadership”. The committee will in November hold a meeting with law enforcement agencies the Hawks and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), as well as regulatory bodies such as the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (Irba) and the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica), in a bid to get to the bottom of one of SA’s biggest banking scandals. A forensic report released last week‚ titled The Great Bank Heist, details how some of SA’s poorest municipalities and the elderly who had deposited their life savings in VBS lost close to R2bn after their deposits were used to fund the lavish lifestyles of individuals linked to the doomed bank‚ including its largest shareholder‚ Vele Investments. It detailed how internal and external auditors, including those from the embattled firm KPMG, turned a blind eye to the looting spre...

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