A businessman and scion of a struggle icon’s family accused of using VBS Mutual Bank for unlawful activities has been ordered to repay the R10m he received from a Namibian bank four years ago, says a Weekend Argus report.

Moses Kotane’s grandson, Mauwane Kotane, was also debarred and his company Mamepe Capital’s licence to operate as a financial services provider was withdrawn by the Financial Service Conduct Authority (FSCA), the regulator of the financial services industry.

FSCA says Kotane was involved in a fraudulent scheme including claiming he had secured a new R175m investment for the now-defunct Namibian bank, Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Bank in 2015.

SME Bank paid Mamepe Capital R10m as a once-off upfront payment for all past, present and future work to provide Kotane’s company with sufficient cash flow, but without having raised any capital for SME Bank.

The regulator found that Kotane was a dishonest person and rejected his lawyer’s claims that he was just naive.

‘Kotane lied for the reason he gave and that was to protect his business and because he believed that if he gave false information the problem would go away and business would be as normal,’ reads the FSCA’s Financial Services Tribunal’s ruling, according to Weekend Argus.

Kotane had approached the tribunal to fight the FSCA’s decision to hand him a decade-long ban and the withdrawal of his company’s licence to operate as a financial services provider, which was delivered earlier this year, and ask that it reconsider them because they were unduly harsh.

The tribunal found that the facts led ineluctably to the conclusion that Kotane did not meet the fit and proper requirements to be licensed despite his impressive commercial CV.

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