Deep hole for SA miners as they grapple with serious financial setback

There is no debate the mining industry is a hazardous and arduous one, an occupation which has been ill-served by collapses like the 2007 Fidentia scandal, where the company’s boss, J Arthur Brown, squandered about R1.3 billion in investments, leaving more than 47 000 beneficiaries – mainly mine workers and their families – destitute.

A City Press report on Sunday points to another serious financial setback for miners and their families with fears that the Bophelo Beneficiary Fund (BBF) could be as much as R560 million in the hole. Pension money belonging to workers at Anglo Platinum had been invested in the BBF, which is administered by Bophelo Benefit Services, a subsidiary of Mvunonala Holdings.

In trying to hide the lost investments the BBF, which holds the funds on behalf of the Amplats Group Provident Fund (AGPF) and its 7 229 beneficiaries, appears to have cooked its financial statements for the past year.

It falsely claimed to own two “investment properties” in Johannesburg – the Parktonian Hotel in Braamfontein and an office block on Grayston Drive, Sandton – were listed in its financial statements for the year ending February 2016, with the properties said to be worth R255m.

The fund’s financials reflect a balance of R578 million – R323 million in equities and R255 million in the “investment properties”, although it now appears there may be no money left in the fund and that the Sandton office block that the BBF claimed to own is, in fact, owned by the Government Employees’ Pension Fund, while the Braamfontein hotel is under sectional title.

There are glaring questions to be asked long before the smoke clears. Surely the Amplats provident fund, as part of normal due diligence, should have conducted a strict audit before handing over any monies owed their workers to an outside investment company.