JOHANNESBURG – South African parties on Friday demanded investigations into claims that the leader of the leftist opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) took bribes as part of a US$130 million bank scandal.

The claims emerged as the former chairman of VBS Mutual Bank was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday on multiple counts of fraud, racketeering, money laundering and theft.

The bank collapsed in 2018 after three years of looting by executives and politicians in a scandal dubbed “the Great Bank Heist”. Tshifhiwa Matodzi was sentenced by the Pretoria High Court after entering into a plea deal with prosecutors.

The Daily Maverick news site carried a copy of Matodzi’s affidavit, reporting that he claimed that the leader of the radical EFF, Julius Malema, and his deputy Floyd Shivambu had received R16 million in “stolen VBS funds”. The EFF would not comment on the allegations. It has previously denied any involvement in the VBS bank scandal.

In a statement Friday, the centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA) demanded police investigate Malema and Shivambu, against whom it had laid charges in 2018 over the VBS affair.

The small centre-right ActionSA also demanded a fresh investigation into the duo. The Afrikaans rights group AfriForum said it would lay criminal charges against them.

In the leaked document, Matodzi also accused the former treasury director-general Dondo Mogajane and provincial officials of the ruling ANC party of involvement in the VBS scandal.

A 2018 report by the South African Reserve Bank detailed how US$130 million (112 million euros) was stolen from VBS over three years by 53 individuals, including executives and politicians. The customers who lost their savings in the plunder of the bank were mainly poor rural depositors, including pensioners, the report said. 

-Nampa/AFP