Collyn Manzana lifted the lid on the Fidentia saga 10 years ago. Today, she has a warning for those who “got off the hook”.
|||Cape Town - A decade ago, Collyn Manzana lifted the lid on the Fidentia saga; today she believes people stole billions from trust funds and are now “sitting nicely, enjoying the beneficiaries’ money”.
Manzana was never called as a witness in the protracted court case.
On Thursday, from her home in a township on the outskirts of Kroonstad, the 60-year-old warned those she felt got off the hook: “I’m still alive and I’m still not very happy. I’m watching you.”
The former Mineworkers’ Provident Fund (MPF) chairwoman and trustee recalled how a decade ago beneficiaries started complaining they were not getting payments and how uneasy she felt after being present when J Arthur Brown pitched his company, after it took over a trust fund for orphans, in Johannesburg.
In a phone interview with the Cape Times, Manzana said she had been subpoenaed to provide statements to the State in 2007. But she was never called as a witness in the six-year case and to date still has documents that could be used as evidence - but which she says the State never tried to access.
On Wednesday Brown, Fidentia’s former head who initially faced 192 charges, was effectively sentenced to a R150 000 fine or three years in jail after being convicted on two counts of fraud.
About R1.3 billion was misappropriated from four funds which invested with Fidentia.
On Thursday Manzana said she planned to write to the National Prosecuting Authority about the outcomes of the case.
The principal of the Vaal Reefs Disaster Trust until last year, Manzana said Brown’s sentence upset her. “My heart hurts for those children (beneficiaries). They’ve been deprived their whole lives. Now justice is still keeping them hurt.”
She had been the MPF’s chairwoman and in 1999 the fund’s board had decided to set up a trust fund for orphans - the Mercantile Asset Trust Company (Matco) was used for this. Matco had its own set of trustees.
Manzana said around 2002 she and Frans Mahlangu, then the MPF’s principal executive officer who died three years ago, noticed Matco beneficiaries were complaining they were either not getting, or getting only a fraction of, their payouts.
“It became intense in 2003 and 2004,” she said.
Manzana and Mahlangu started speaking up about the discrepancies. In 2004 Matco was taken over by Fidentia.
Manzana said at a meeting in Johannesburg that year, Brown and other colleagues addressed MPF trustees about their plans.
“I picked up they knew little about trust funds. I said: ‘No. This is not really what we meant when we wanted money to go to the children.’ I wanted us, the MPF, to withdraw our money from Matco,” Manzana said. However, this angered those around her and in October 2004 she was removed from the MPF board.
Mahlangu had also been forced from the MPF and Manzana said it was because they had made a fuss of the beneficiaries not being paid.
“I stood alone with Frans. He died of stress. He was frustrated… They ruined his life,” Manzana said. She said Mahlangu, 51, a father of three killed in a car accident in January 2010 in Mpumalanga, had struggled to find employment, as being a Fidentia whistleblower had tarnished his name.
The day before he died, he had complained to Manzana that he was barred from a job due to the Fidentia saga.
“I said to him: ‘Frans, please can’t you just get over it? These people are out to get you.’
“He died the next morning. His children are suffering.”
Manzana believed beneficiaries’ money was pocketed. “This money, I can safely say, was stolen with the understanding it wouldn’t be picked up. There are now people sitting nicely, enjoying the beneficiaries’ money,” she said.
A third whistle-blower in the case, Hendrik R Bam, was not in the country. According to a Fidentia curators’ report to the Western Cape High Court on the status of the curatorship as of December 31, it said he had emigrated to Australia.
The curators were trying to locate him as Bam was ordered to pay them about R9.8m.
caryn.dolley@inl.co.za
Cape Times