THE recent interrogation of the National University of Lesotho (NUL) Pension Fund Board of Trustees by parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has laid bare the pension fund industry’s general chronic rot, corruption and incompetence.
It has also exposed a syndicate that has corruptly consolidated itself in the Public Officers’ Defined Contribution Pension Fund (PODCPF) for many years. The syndicate has been bribing the PODCPF’s Board of Trustees to sway decisions in its favour.
The March 2024 appointment of Akani Financial Services by the NUL Pension Fund Board of Trustees, to administer the university’s pension affairs, against the NUL management’s legitimate concerns, is beyond all comprehension. It is yet another example of how corruption is now entrenched in Lesotho.
How do the PODCPF, NUL Pension Fund and Akani relate?
Well, the common denominator between the three is none other than NUL Pension Fund Principal Officer, Monaheng Mahlatsi, who is also a trustee of the PODCPF, wherein he represents the Public Officers’ Defined Contribution Pensioners’ Association (PODCPA). The PODCPA is the umbrella body of all the public sector representative organisations or trade unions that represent public sector workers from nurses, teachers, etc. Mahlatsi is also a member of the PODCPF’s investment committee. Such is his tremendous influence.
This is the same Mahlatsi who in 2020, by his own admission, bankrolled the PODCPA to sue the PODCPF, demanding that the pension fund sever ties with its long-term administrator – NBC-Lesotho.
Needless to mention that NBC-Lesotho, a subsidiary of NBC Holdings, the pan African fund administration titan based in Johannesburg, had assisted the then clueless government of Lesotho with all the intricacies of establishing a viable pension fund sector.
The world now knows that the rebellion staged by the PODCPA was all orchestrated. It was all at the behest of Mahlatsi, to further his scheme of getting Akani Fund Administrators hired in place of NBC.
Mahlatsi, who was most probably on Akani’s payroll, engineered the rebellion solely to feather his own nest. It is clear from a close reading of the court papers that the “applicants” in that court case were mere stooges doing someone’s bidding.
Sadly for Mahlatsi, his scheme has not succeeded, at least for now, as NBC has also fought tooth, nail and claw to vindicate its position while exposing the skulduggery underpinning the whole plan to replace it. It is understandable that Mahlatsi is aggrieved that his effort to have Akani take over the PODCPF and its counterpart fund, the SODCPF, has not succeeded.
So how best to compensate Akani, for whatever it had given him, than by enabling it the mandate to administer the NUL Pension Fund of which he is the principal officer? All at the expense of Metropolitan Lesotho, which had efficiently administered that fund for 18 years, and other reputable service providers, including NBC itself, who could have been appointed if there were any viable reasons of dislodging Metropolitan.
What makes all this tragic is that Mahlatsi and Co have shown they are prepared to go an extra mile in bypassing all requisite due diligence processes in their bid to help Akani.
Despite knowing well that the licence of the NUL Pension Fund Board of Trustees to operate as a decision-making body had expired, Mahlatsi connived with that Board’s chairman, Pheteli Malunga, to drop Metropolitan in favour of Akani.
Mahlatsi’s conscience did not even gnaw at him because, clearly, he does not have one. That Akani is a wholly discredited and crooked entity – as exposed in ubiquitous media reports in South Africa and elsewhere – has not bothered Mahlatsi and Co. All they want is money for their jam.
Why should they be bothered when they have been guests of Akani in Johannesburg to receive their trinkets after unduly scoring the company higher than any of its reputable competitors?
Which explains why members of the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) deserve credit for calling a spade a spade. They told Mahlatsi and his fellow travellers that the only reasonable inference to draw from their irrational decision to appoint Akani was that the latter had bribed them to do so.
Akani was competing with Metropolitan Lesotho, Alliance Insurance Company, LNIG and NBC-Lesotho, all of which are domiciled in Lesotho and are reputable, while Akani is a hoax. Not to mention the claims by MPs that Akani was not even licensed by the regulator, the Central Bank of Lesotho (CBL), at the time of its appointment by the NUL trustees.
Akani did not need to bother about fulfilling basic criteria for such a tender? Mahlatsi and his fellow corrupt travellers where there for the crooked company. And so it won the job it did not deserve.
The management of the NUL deserves huge credit for vigorously questioning the legitimacy of Akani’s appointment and for whistle blowing this corruption resulting in the intervention of the PAC. Professor Motlamelle Kapa, deserves special accolades for refusing to be part of this corruption by quitting the NUL Pension Fund’s Board of Trustees.
As was revealed at the PAC interrogation, Mahlatsi and Malunga, had been guests of Akani in Johannesburg on an all expenses for luxurious trip before awarding it the tender. We don’t know what else they were given during that trip. PAC members are right to infer that they pocketed their largesse on that trip? The trip itself was illegitimate and corrupt. No similar trips were funded for all the other tenderers. If the reason was that they already have offices in Lesotho and they could be inspected locally, then why bother with a company, which should have been disqualified on account of the fact that it did not even have a viable office in Lesotho as required by law?
Inevitably after their Johannesburg junket, Mahlatsi and Malunga’s influence filtered down to other members of the Board of Trustees of the NUL Pension Fund, resulting in Akani being awarded an incomprehensibly high score to win the administration tender.
If Lesotho had serious law enforcement entities, these two and all their fellow travellers will be behind bars now, discussing how to justify their bail terms with their lawyers.
Akani is now refusing to reimburse the M2 million plus in pensioners contributions it is already holding after Metropolitan had relinquished the administration work to Akani in the aftermath of the rigged tender. Another unwarranted legal battle could ensue to recover that money. All because of Mahlatsi and Co’s avarice.
If Mr Mahlatsi could do this to the NUL Pension Fund, of which he is the P/O, it means that nothing is beyond him. He can go to any lengths to advance his and his friends’ corrupt endeavours.
Mahlatsi’s conduct should automatically make him a person of interest in the alleged broader corruption in the PODCPF, where we have seen a spirited bid to eliminate NBC and appoint a pliant service provider. With NBC gone, the corrupt networks will prosper. The only remaining guardrail to ensure proper oversight of the fund will be gone. The corrupt networks will then take charge of the entire value chain from administration to investment consulting and appointment of asset managers.
The most worrying issue remains that while people entrusted to run crucial pensions funds, like Mahlatsi, routinely violate their fiduciary duties to feather their own nests, Lesotho continues to suffocate further under poverty and underdevelopment.
The billions in the PODCPF are not benefiting the development of Lesotho. They are pilfered to South Africa and elsewhere under the myopic pretext that Lesotho does not have investible assets. The asset managers controlling these billions are not held accountable because the PODCPF – a public entity – is run like a private spaza. The asset managers’ performance levels are not known by the very pensioners who contribute their hard-earned money. As we have warned before, they may wake up one day to discover that their pensions have no value.
That’s is all hardly surprising of course. The pensioners are represented by crooked characters like Mahlatsi who are in it for their own pockets in conjunction with corrupt service providers like Akani.
The situation is not helped by the lack of a government that understands the value of pension funds in national development. The key entities responsible for South Africa’s rapid development such as power utility Eskom, logistics behemoth Transnet, railway operator Prasa, fuel and energy supplier Sasol, and other public utilities were partly built by that country’s pension funds. Sadly, no one in the Lesotho government seems to have the depth to appreciate the huge difference the country’s main pension funds can make to the country’s development. The word prescribed assets must be alien to all of Lesotho’s state bureaucrats.
The only question that remains now is, when is the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Offences (DCEO) going to move against Mahlatsi and his fellow crooks, if at all?
We sadly should not hold our collective breath.
