# Social Category > The Whistleblower Forum >  The Fall of the South African Reserve Bank

## ScottyC

This topic is based on the following documentary trailer, posted recently by Michael Deurr who is a shareholder of the South African Reserve Bank: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKBPvL51VmY.

When a shareholder of an organisation actively tries to expose the corruption within it, one needs to listen and take note.

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## Garf

There is a big question mark over all "country" banks, take a look at all the conspiracy theory stuff on youtube about The Federal Reserve in the USA.

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## ScottyC

Oh yes, I am very familiar with these "conspiracies" which is why we did our own research in SA and found out that most of this was true. For example, see www.newera.org.za.

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## Dave A

It's not like the SARB hid this. It was major headline news at the time. When Bankorp collapsed (despite the bailout funds in question now), the Reserve Bank debt was a major hurdle to the ABSA buy-out of portions of Bankorp. ABSA made it plain that if the Reserve Bank debt came with the assets they were buying, there would be no deal.

Why the SARB decided not to force the issue I can only guess. Probably the biggest clue is most of the civil service of the day in Pretoria banked at Volkskas, and their personal bank accounts were frozen.

Somewhere in Thabo Mbeki's term as President, I recall this was looked at again with a view to pursuing recovery of the loan from ABSA. And the government of the day decided to drop it. I don't recall a reason being given as to exactly *why* it wasn't deemed worthy to pursue further, though. Either there's a rock solid legal obstacle that prevents recovery, or yet another deal was done. (Probably worth noting that probably wouldn't have involved the SARB, but rather the political connections of the day).

What fascinates me is why is Barclays dragged into the current story? They had disinvested in SA at the time and had no interest in ABSA, or Bankorp, or anything else in the sorry mess. They only bought ABSA more than a decade later. Insinuating their involvement sounds like grounds for a good libel lawsuit, I'd think.

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## ScottyC

Thank you Dave! This is very interesting. It will be great to see the full documentary when it airs and see what else they dig up.

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## wynn

This is an extract of an article that appeared in Noseweek 131 1 Sept 2010

""The ANC government was told in a secret report how apartheid-era government operatives stole hundreds of billions from the State - and how vast sums could be recovered from those responsible and the European bankers who helped them hide the loot. But mysteriously, the Mbeki cabinet and the Reserve Bank decided to do nothing about it. Why?

After a vitriolic disinformation campaign led by Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus, an amendment to the current Reserve Bank Act, tailor-made to silence the banks private shareholders, has hurriedly been tabled in parliament. Those shareholders, you see, have been asking much the same question.

To his submission Lang attached just five pages from a much longer report submitted to the South African Secret Service (SASS) in 1999 by a London-based firm of private investigators called Ciex. The extract from Operations on behalf of the South African Government 1997-1999 is, however, enough to show that Ciex was commissioned by SASS to investigate how public funds were stolen or otherwise misappropriated during the apartheid era, with a view to recovering some pretty substantial sums of money, most of it still hidden abroad. The Ciex report contains a strategic plan, Project Spear designed to do just that.

Ciex has to date identified and provided Government with the opportunity to recover:

R3.2bn from Absa
R3bn to R6bn from Sanlam and Rembrandt
Up to R5.5bn from Aerospatiale/Daimler-Chrysler
Among other culprits identified were state arms procurer Armscor and a former senior apartheid cabinet minister identified only by the code-name Gnome. 

A great deal of the money had, it transpires, disappeared with the active but secret assistance of the South African Reserve Bank. Page 3 of Mr Langs attachment outlines how Ciex was supposed to develop leverage with the SARB and Absa to recover funds such as Illegal lifeboats/subventions by SARB.

These are the same illegal lifeboats about which various Reserve Bank shareholders, including another German shareholder, banker Michael Duerr (see noses101,103,115,127&129), have for the past year been asking questions  questions which the Bank has simply refused to answer. What financial assistance packages, lifeboats etc. are responsible for losses to the SARB? Where have those billions gone? Duerr demanded to know from the new governor, Gill Marcus in April. (His similar questions to her predecessor, Tito Mboweni got no answers  but appear to have precipitated Mbowenis early retirement.)

Quite logically Duerr reckoned that billions of lost assets would obviously have diminished the banks share value, and that, as a shareholder of the bank, he was entitled to demand an explanation from the banks management. In May, Marcus, too, refused to answer the questions, while dismissing the lifeboat notion as scurrilous and defamatory.

Noseweek readers have, of course, long known (see nose14) that the Reserve Banks illegal lifeboats (massive but secret free handouts to politically well-connected banks) were no mere notion. Thanks to Mr Lang, noseweek can now state categorically that Ms Marcus and her predecessor, Mr Mboweni, knew that the illegal gifts which the SARB chose to disguise as lifeboats in fact amounted to plain fraud  and that they had cost the general population many billions, while contributing hugely to the personal wealth of just a few members of the Afrikaner elite of the apartheid era.""

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## Dave A

> (His similar questions to her predecessor, Tito Mboweni got no answers – but appear to have precipitated Mboweni’s early retirement.)


Noseweek has evidence to back that allegation up? Or is this just another of those typical tabloid "I'll join the dots how it suits me to see them" statements.

Reading between the lines in our discussion, A peek inside the SA Reserve Bank yields a number of people who might also be able to claim credit. Seems Tito had no shortage of sparring partners from the ranks of the shareholders over the years.

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## Miro Bagrov

There was a moment when the SARB investors all protested that their shares are undervalued and that SARS should pay out it's retained earnings to the shareholders. The SARB pointed to their mission statement and said that they act in the best interest of the South African public and not in the best interest of the investors.

At the time I was also looking at buying SARB shares and returns p/a were around 5.2% at the time because the investor would pay average R9.5 per share and earn about 50c on each share held at payout. I personally found them to be semi-liquid assets 
At that time these same protesting investors went and offered their shares on the market at R6000 per share to protest against the SARB's statement! Needless to say their boycotts cost any new investors the chance to buy shares for that period and distorted prices. 

If they are "investors" I am also an "investor", which means Ive made money and lost money and I don't see how crying about it helps. It seems to me they are still crying about it

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