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Following charges that I laid in 2018 against 53 persons implicated in the looting of VBS Mutual Bank - including members of the ANC, case number CAS1058/05/2019 will be heard in the Pretoria High Court today. The DA welcomes this significant development which is a critical first step towards holding the first 14 perpetrators of the VBS heist to account.

Although the wheels of justice are only starting to move now, 5 years after the DA laid charges, it is our sincere hope that this is the first of several cases that will force the thieves who got away with murder to have their day in court.

Even though the EFF's Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu are not part of the 14 appearing before the Pretoria High Court today, their participation in the wholesale looting of VBS, which decimated the pensions of vulnerable old age people, forms part of the investigations that are still ongoing in this case.

In an 11-page affidavit that I deposed at the Cape Town police station, I presented well-documented anecdotal evidence which showed how vulnerable people such as mine workers' widows and hard-pressed municipalities had money stolen from them by politicians and corrupt officials through the VBS Bank heist using a variety of illegal schemes.

The consequences of this heist have been dire:

• The curator of VBS has indicated that it is unlikely that municipalities will get their deposits back.
• This means that these municipalities – which include some of the poorest and worst-run in the country – are still struggling to deliver basic services. It should be noted that it is illegal for municipalities to deposit funds in a mutual bank. So once again, residents will lose out because of ANC mismanagement and corruption!
• In Fetakgomo/Greater Tubatse Municipality, for example, basic services such as water supply and the completion of hundreds of RDP houses were put on hold because of the loss of some R245 million illegally invested in VBS.
• The Greater Giyani Municipality lost R161 million that was illegally invested in VBS.
• IVhembe District Municipality, lost R311 million, which equates to a third of their annual operating revenue.

Considering the amount of time that has lapsed since the scandal was exposed by the DA, some of the VBS looters had started to think they had gotten away with their grand theft. The DA will not let this happen and we will ensure that every implicated individual is brought before a court of law to answer for their criminality.

Issued by Kevin Mileham MP - DA Member of Parliament