This year, Sasfin Bank seemingly declared defeat after a series of scandalous revelations about the deep rot in its foreign exchange business.

Facing a multi-billion rand damages claim from SARS for allegedly facilitating what appears to have been rampant money laundering, the bank first announced that it would remove itself from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and then that it would simply stop being a bank altogether.

Meanwhile it still maintains that its woes stem from the proverbial bad apples – individual employees that need to be brought to book.

However, AmaBhungane has obtained years of records for Sasfin’s forex accounts at FNB and Nedbank – places where it pools clients’ funds before sending them abroad. We also have internal data on the bank’s clients.

Put together these documents, which stretch back a decade, show how Sasfin’s forex department ran amok as long ago as 2014.

This extends beyond cases and individuals already made public by SARS’ recent attempt to hold Sasfin accountable for its trades on behalf of dodgy clients (which we reported on previously).

If nothing else, Sasfin’s accounts show how brokers and staff courted clients that should, on the face of it, never have made it past even a cursory due diligence check.

This includes a number of interrelated companies implicated in money laundering for the network around the Gupta family.

It also includes a byzantine mesh of entities tied to Takela Group – the government housing contractor we recently exposed for seemingly moonlighting in the local money laundering scene.

In general, strange transactional behaviour and fly-by-night account holders abound and have done so for all the years we have sight of.

Sasfin, in response to all our questions around what follows, told us the following:

“Sasfin has taken significant and decisive action whenever we have become aware of financial crime, including the exiting of our foreign exchange business. We have been transparent and collaborative with the authorities and regulators. Sasfin maintains a zero tolerance of financial crime and has laid criminal charges against all parties implicated in our investigations. We are unable to comment on allegations involving former clients or employees.”

Recap

As we reported before, in December last year SARS dragged Sasfin to court with two potentially life-threatening claims of R2.9-billion and R1.97-billion respectively.

The bank’s entire annual income last year was R1.3-billion.

The first claim related entirely to Gold Leaf Tobacco Corporation (GLTC), owned by Zimbabwean mogul Simon Rudland and partner Ebrahim Adamjee. SARS previously levelled a R4.5-billion tax assessment at the tobacco company. The damage claim against Sasfin is for money it allowed to be expatriated through GLTC’s account and which is now unavailable for helping settle that debt.

The second claim relates to 18 different entities that also collectively expatriated billions via Sasfin – undeclared income on which the bank, SARS reasons, owes corporate income tax and VAT.

Once again, the taxman is shifting the blame to Sasfin because its allegedly corrupt foreign exchange department made sure those taxes cannot get paid.

In both cases, Sasfin is implicated for its alleged negligence in allowing cash to be siphoned off overseas under false pretences.

The strategy of going after a bank that facilitated alleged tax evasion rather than the empty husks of front companies implicated in these schemes is a major departure and, if successful, could under the right conditions lead to a veritable bloodbath among financial institutions. It would not be confined to Sasfin.

The main thing, however, would be to show that the bank staff were knowingly complicit, or at least grossly negligent.

While SARS named 18 companies and also fingered four Sasfin employees, it has stopped well short of giving the full picture.

Now we can show you more, albeit with a caveat about how much further we can take things.

Most transactions through Sasfin’s accounts are anonymised, while others are only identified through account numbers, only some of which we could identify.

We also only have sight of two of the accounts where Sasfin daily pooled incoming payments before sending them abroad – those at FNB and Nedbank. We do not have details for Sasfin’s major account at ABSA, which we are told was its dominant platform for receiving payments.

We thus still have an only partial view and our figures for business done with dubious clients will therefore, in all cases, be a conservative minimum.

We can however show what some of the networks using Sasfin looked like.

The usual suspects

The elephant in the room is SALT Asset Management, the broker that facilitated Gold Leaf Tobacco Corporation’s billions in offshore payments (which we canvassed here).

According to the information we have obtained, SALT acted for an array of other Sasfin clients, including, but not limited to, some among the 18 mentioned in SARS’ case against the bank.

These include Ocean Twelve General Trading which, according to SARS, sent just shy of R2-billion offshore through Sasfin in just 18 months between 2013 and 2014.

Something that conceivably should have raised eyebrows is that Lone Eagle General Traders, another company registered on the same day with the same director, started doing the same thing soon afterwards –.

SALT had other clients that alert bank staff might have picked up on too, such as three companies with the same director – an otherwise untraceable woman named Sadaf Naidu. 

These were Zey Squared, SA Star Shine Dealers and Agilex General Trader. In the statements at our disposal we can see them make suspiciously rapid-fire payments – often several in a single day.

The nature of these companies appears to be anathema to any diligent Know Your Customer standard, as were the transaction patterns.

Other associated clients on the SARS list of Safsin clients include two amaBhungane has previously exposed: Actinic Holdings and a bogus clone of Putzmeister (of no affiliation to Putzmeister Concrete Pumps GmbH or its affiliated entities, including Putzmeister SA (Pty) Ltd) – both brainchildren of storied alleged money launderer Howard “Howie” Baker and Johannesburg attorney Saleem Ebrahim.

The bogus Putzmeister used an innovative scheme involving a fake debt turned into a real court order to expatriate millions (read here). It flogged this same R67-million court order at several banks besides Sasfin in order to also send a total of R160-million abroad.

It’s not much of a defence, but it’s worth pointing out how Sasfin was often part of a multi-bank strategy.

A report commissioned by the SARB from Gildenhuys Malatji Attorneys in 2020 and obtained by amaBhungane found that Actinic had in total expatriated up to R160-million, while Sasfin’s books separately show that only R51-million of that passed through the bank’s door.

As we previously revealed, Actinic also had accounts at Bidvest, Mercantile and Habib Overseas Bank – each of which potentially faces the kind of damages claim from SARS Sasfin is fighting off.

Putzmeister used an innovative scheme involving a fake debt turned into a real court order to expatriate millions (read here). It flogged this same R67-million court order at several banks besides Sasfin in order to also send a total of R160-million abroad.

The state capture crowd

In Sasfin’s accounts and client book there are a number of names that cropped up in previous installments of this series, specifically clients of “shadow bank” RENS Kontant in Transito that were allegedly involved in laundering the proceeds of state capture.

More precisely, Sasfin’s FNB account received numerous payments from an entity named Zokubyte Trading totalling at least R62,8-million between late 2015 and early 2016.

As reported, Zokubyte itself received several million from the Gupta laundry network identified in evidence before the Zondo Commission, but also millions from RENS, which as we revealed, originated from physical cash pickups apparently organised by a Pretoria businessman.

Zokubyte in turn sent money to a number of accounts at Sasfin: one in its own name alongside others for entities named Varlozone, Coral General Traders and Ahlan Wasahlan Enterprises. Of these, Varlozone and Coral have previously been identified as channels for state capture funds.

These payments came thick and fast, as is shown in Sasfin’s account at FNB.

Networks

In our previous installment we revealed a complex scheme seemingly directed by a prolific government contractor who has been raking in housing tenders.

At Sasfin we found another network that appears to involve the same contractor, Takela Group, belonging to businessman Ke Tang.

Our questions to Ke Tang went unanswered.

The network we identified in Sasfin’s books consisted of at least 14 companies being “fed” by at least 15 external accounts – a setup that bristled with red flags.

These accounts consistently overlap: one external account would frequently pay money to, for example, five of the Sasfin clients, then another of the external accounts would also pay an overlapping seven clients and so on.

Here’s how it worked.

In our voluminous Sasfin data we first found several payments into an odd assortment of companies from an account belonging to one Jianying Huang, the sole director of a company named Mega King Holdings, which is a trade financing partner to Takela Group.

Amabhungane was unable to reach Huang for comment.

AmaBhungane traced all the Sasfin clients it could find receiving funds from the Huang account mentioned above. There were seven: Afrmart Importer and Exporter, Da Jun Trading, Lethabo Import And Export, Mimschach Marketing, Sun Rare Trading, Xing Qi Trading and Zero-Bits.

We found that all seven clients also, however, regularly received funds from other anonymous accounts, as well as from one account belonging to Takela.

Another identifiable account belonged to Sabona Freight Services, a company involved in the scheme we identified in our previous installment.

We then traced all the other entities with Sasfin accounts receiving money from these additional accounts to arrive at, on one hand, a list of “feeder” accounts and, on the other hand, a list of Sasfin clients being “fed”.

The spiderweb that emerges moved at the very least R576-million through Sasfin in the course of 2015, making it a possible precursor to the scheme we revealed previously.

This figure is likely very conservative due to the anonymisation of much of the Sasfin accounting, as well as amaBhungane not having full access to all relevant accounts.

Whatever justification there might be for this strange pattern of overlapping payments, there can be little excuse for the ‘clients’ involved not raising alarms.

Red alert

While Sasfin might argue that transactions were not flagged due to investigations into Takela and related entities not being well known or completed at the time, the nature of the clients – not to mention the strange pattern of payments – should arguably have raised eyebrows.

We spotted about R39-million flowing to Afrmart Importer and Exporter – a company that has as its sole director a domestic worker residing in Tembisa, as opposed to a seemingly random address in downtown Johannesburg given in company registration documents.

Sharing the same seemingly fake address was Smartburg Importer and Export, for which we could trace R49-million in payments. Its sole director seemingly lives in a RDP house in Ivory Park and has no employment history.

Incidentally, both of these companies seem to have been created by a shelf company vendor named Fact Corporation, which will crop up again. Both of these unlikely directors also have generic Factcorp email addresses consisting of their ID numbers.

We have tried and failed to track down Fact Corporation’s registered director and the company has itself since been deregistered.

Another group of five of the companies in the network were all registered by the same (now closed) accountancy firm in the East Johannesburg suburb of Bruma – NIQ Accounting and Training Services.

Two of these – Da Jun Trading Pty Ltd and Lethabo Import And Export Pty Ltd – had the same untraceable Chinese director, Jingwei Lin, and collectively moved R100-million through Sasfin.

Two more – Xing Qi Trading and Ming Yi Import And Export – also had an untraceable Chinese director, Ruling Duan, and collectively moved R124-million.

The last of the five, Sun Rare Trading, had Thai citizen Wilaiporn Tanaponvanit (again untraceable) as sole director and moved R46-million that we could find. Like many Sasfin clients, Sun Rare later had its Sasfin account seized and forfeited to the state.

It keeps going.

Great Option Trading, Real Sales Trading, Top Skill Trading and Red Maple Trading were also part of the network. Once again all of them have untraceable Chinese directors and we can see R77-million moving through their Sasfin accounts as part of the network.

Great Option and Top Skill also share a postal address.

If amaBhungane is able to spot this tangled mesh of dubious related entities it seems unlikely that banking professionals would not be able to – casting yet more doubt over the diligence or bona fides of the staff at Sasfin.

Not unique

AmaBhungane found another network at Sasfin similar to the one seemingly associated with Tang using the same methods.

This time we found two “feeder” accounts – one at FNB and one at Nedbank –pumping money into a group of at least 12 companies.

Foremost among the companies in this network is Pienkie Piengos, which received at least R94-million in its Sasfin account. This company was seemingly registered by the same accountants firm that registered companies comprising part of the Tang network.

Similarly interesting was M-Horse Trading and Projects, which received another R23.4-million and had an untraceable Malawian director but seemed to be coordinating with Pienkie, often receiving simultaneous payments from the same external account.

Tellingly, the third-party broker representing these two companies at Sasfin was Rand Bureau de Change – a company that in December 2015 had its license to deal in foreign currency withdrawn by the Reserve Bank. Pienkie Piengos’ activity at Sasfin stopped immediately.

The network fed by the same two accounts as Pienkie and M-Horse continued, however, with a number of other dubious Sasfin clients picking up the slack.

Ten more companies collectively received R83.3-million from the two feeder accounts.

Half of these companies were also linked to the same residential address in Carletonville, indicating a coordinated system.

It is worth mentioning that at least three of these companies also went on to have their bank accounts seized by the reserve bank for contravening exchange control rules.

The welcome wagon

At Sasfin, several staffers have been accused of actively facilitating the illegal expatriation of money, not least the erstwhile head of the forex desk Brandon Marshall.

AmaBhungane has obtained a Sasfin client file that not only lists all the bank’s clients but also attaches each one to a member of staff – or to an external broker.

One extremely conspicuous feature of this file is that the vast majority of suspect entities mentioned thus far had the same staffer listed next to their names – Pedzai Mvere.

Mvere told us that he was merely a sales representative and that “the clients entered the standard sales process facilitated by the bank.”

“For any inquiries related to the onboarding process and Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures, you will need to consult Sasfin’s onboarding department and compliance department to understand how the clients were integrated into their system…it is advisable to reach out to Sasfin’s payments department to obtain information on how these transactions were processed, settled, and categorized under the Balance of Payments (BOP).”

At least two things, however, point towards Mvere having had a more interesting role in the industry.

AmaBhungane has found an unexplained relationship between Mvere and a company named Transparency Business Solutions. Transparency was reportedly implicated in the complex money laundering exercise that dissipated funds stolen from the Namibian Small and Medium Enterprises Bank.

On 19 January 2015 Mvere received a payment of R100 000 from Transparency. In his written response to our questions he omitted a response to a question specifically about this.

Perhaps equally significant is that Mvere evidently worked closely with his boss Brandon Marshall, the disgraced head of Sasfin’s forex desk who was pointedly called out by SARS for allegedly assisting clients to “illegally export funds” from South Africa.

Marshall declined to comment.

Marshall and Mvere were both directors of a company named Global Foreign Exchange Financial Services. This was an offshoot of one of Sasfin’s major third-party brokers, Global Foreign Exchange.

Global Foreign Exchange is in turn owned by two very prominent South Africans – soccer boss Irvin Khoza and housing mogul Granny Seape.

Khoza told us via a spokesman that he is just a passive investor, while Seape ignored our questions.

Dodgy papers

Apart from failing – intentionally or not – to spot inherently suspicious clients with unlikely directors, addresses and bank balances, banks are also, in principle, meant to monitor suspicious transactions.

However, the Sasfin accounts are full of clearly unusual patterns that amaBhungane can spot but not identify due to the anonymisation of entries.

Here, paperwork is often the most glaring sign that something is wrong.

One constant in the various money laundering schemes we have canvassed is the large scale fabrication of invoices to justify payments for which there is no (legal) commercial rationale.

The Gold Leaf Tobacco case allegedly involved an epic campaign of forgery, producing dozens of supposed invoices for goods from Dubai as well as many other parts of the world. These invoices emulated the real invoices of legitimate suppliers of cigarette manufacturing goods.

One particularly notable “invoice factory” of this kind will be the focus of our next installment; we also showed in our previous installment how fake invoices were used on a large scale to justify the expatriation of money through a web of 26 fronts forming part of a single scheme.

Another Sasfin client, however, shows how sloppy paperwork should raise eyebrows and brings us to the question of who is actually responsible for catching the fakes.

That client is Professional Shipping, another company that eventually, in 2019, saw its Sasfin account seized by the SARB, but which nonetheless seems to be alive and well.

AmaBhungane has obtained documentation Professional Shipping submitted to Sasfin to make offshore payments – documents that a trained eye would have queried.

According to invoices given to Sasfin the company was importing large quantities of “hair pieces”, diapers, hardware, handbags and massage tables.

There is nothing wrong with having a diversified trading business but the invoices that Professional Shipping presented to Sasfin to justify offshore payments have several telltale signs of being forgeries.

There are, for instance, multiple invoices from the same supplier for similar goods on single days. Even fishier is the fact that the same companies sometimes have letterheads with conspicuously different lettering in terms of both size and font.

The invoice templates for ostensibly unrelated suppliers of wildly different goods were also strangely similar.

Professional Shipping did not respond to questions or follow-up messages.

Like many large forex clients, Professional Shipping was represented by a third party broker, in this case BeztForex, belonging to Jacobus “Koos” Bezuidenhout.

At Sasfin, BeztForex has represented big fish clients like remittance giant Hello Paisa (by far the largest user of the Sasfin forex accounts we have access to).

In response to our questions BeztForex told us:

“We confirm that during the period of our intermediary banking relationship, we conducted business in a proper and compliant manner, strictly adhering to the requirements of the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), and our banking partner.”

“Please note that we are bound by the provisions of the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act, client confidentiality obligations, and the confidentiality terms outlined in our intermediary agreement with our banking partner. As such, we are unable to comment further on this matter.”

While the case of Sasfin is rife with egregious known and indicative examples of illicit money moving operations, this is hardly confined to any one bank.

As we will show in our next installment, even where there is arguably no corruption, South African banks’ checks and balances are often dramatically lacking.

Apology:

An earlier version of this article failed to make clear that the misuse of the Putzmeister name in the alleged laundry scheme was done without the knowledge or authorisation of Putzmeister SA (Pty) Ltd or Putzmeister Concrete Pumps GmbH and that neither Putzmeister, Putzmeister SA (Pty) Ltd nor any of its affiliated entities received any financial benefit as a result of the alleged conduct of previous employees.

In addition, after becoming aware of the alleged conduct, Putzmeister Concrete Pumps GmbH and Putzmeister SA (Pty) Ltd took all reasonable action to investigate the matter, to cooperate with all relevant authorities and has acted in accordance with all of its legal obligations, including those in terms of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act and the Financial Intelligence Centre Act.