CAPE TOWN – SA Home Loans (SAHL) will hold a board meeting today for two of its directors to answer to allegations that they promoted an irregular R10 billion loan that included a questionable R45 million kickback from the Public Investment Corporation (PIC).
SAHL chief executive Kevin Penwarden confirmed the meeting, and said he would be able to disclose the outcome afterwards.
The meeting comes after Judge Lex Mpati’s inquiry into the PIC heard that the lender offered SAHL a second loan worth R10 billion in April on condition that its transaction fee included a R45 million claimed by its head of black empowerment consortium Kholofelo Maponya.
Maponya took the PIC and SAHL to court for failing to pay his alleged fee on the initial R9bn loan made five years earlier.
This was the nub of the written evidence to the PIC Commission by Royith Rajdhar, a non-executive director of SAHL and its holding company SAHL Investment Holdings. Rajdhar was senior fund principal at the PIC when the initial loan was made.
Maponya’s consortium bought a 25 percent stake in SAHL from the funds it secured from the PIC.
Rajdhar said the PIC advised that it would not pay Maponya’s alleged R45m transaction fee in 2016 and argued that SAHL should pay it.
He said SAHL, however, also refused to pay the fee.
The Maponya consortium served summons on the PIC and SAHL on April 11 this year.
Penwarden presented a report to the board that the implicated directors had indicated to SAHL senior management that a further R10bn facility could be procured on condition that they received a 0.95 percent initiation fee that would incorporate the R45m that had not been paid.
Rajdhar said both directors denied Penwarden’s allegations, and requested the board meeting to present their case.
Penwarden had shared his report with the group's auditors and shareholders, and the auditors had submitted a report to the Independent Regulatory Board of Auditors, which had given the SAHL directors until May 30 to respond to the “irregularity.”
SAHL executive directors include Penwarden; chief operation officer Robert Kelso; Kevin Penwarden (chief executive); and Crispin Swainston Harrison.