CAPE TOWN – SA Home Loans’ (SAHL) board is preparing for its next course of action after two directors answered, at a board meeting on Wednesday, to allegations that they had promoted a R10 billion loan that included a questionable R45 million kickback from the Public Investment Corporation (PIC).
SAHL chief executive Kevin Penwarden said on Thursday in a telephone interview that he could not at this stage comment on the contents of the board meeting itself.
Evidence before the PIC Commission of Inquiry this week alleged the PIC had offered SAHL a second loan on April 29 this year, worth R10bn, on condition that its transaction fee include R45m claimed by Kholofelo Maponya, the head of SAHL’s black empowerment consortium.
Maponya had started legal action against the PIC and SAHL for failing to pay his alleged transaction fee of the same amount, on a first R9bn loan that the PIC had made to SAHL five years earlier.
Penwarden said the loan conditions of this R9bn facility had been fully carried out by SAHL, in that a portion of it was dedicated to providing home loans to Government Employee Pension Fund members on normal terms, R2bn was earmarked for housing and R2bn was earmarked for SAHL’s normal business operations.
Their application for a further R10bn loan was because the R9bn facility had exhausted itself close to the middle of last year. The R10bn facility would be split in much the same way as the first loan, and would include a similar percentage to be dedicated to affordable housing, although the actual split still needed to be negotiated, said Penwarden.
He said SAHL’s financial position was healthy and it did not only rely on the PIC for loan funding. Other sources of funding included from the capital market, private placements and from banks and insurance companies.