{"id":295072,"date":"2019-01-24T10:22:31","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T08:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=295072"},"modified":"2019-01-24T11:46:44","modified_gmt":"2019-01-24T09:46:44","slug":"pic-breached-policy-when-it-agreed-to-invest-in-sa-tech-company-audit-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/it-services\/295072\/pic-breached-policy-when-it-agreed-to-invest-in-sa-tech-company-audit-head\/","title":{"rendered":"PIC breached policy when it agreed to invest in SA tech company: audit head"},"content":{"rendered":"
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South Africa\u2019s Public Investment Corp breached policy when it agreed to invest in a local technology company before the deal had received the necessary approvals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time I\u2019ve seen something like this within the PIC,\u201d Lufuno Nemagovhani, the head of the money manager\u2019s internal audit department, told a commission of inquiry on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The deal, in which PIC took all of Ayo Technology Solutions Ltd\u2019s private placement in December 2017, was flagged after a routine audit of the Pretoria-based fund manager\u2019s listed investments in May, he said.<\/p>\n

The continent\u2019s biggest money manager suspended two employees on Tuesday following an investigation into PIC\u2019s decision to spend R4.3 billion ($310 million) on the transaction.<\/p>\n

That valued Ayo at R14.8 billion even though its assets were estimated at R292 million. A commission of inquiry is probing allegations of impropriety at the institution.<\/p>\n

The due diligence and payment document for the transaction, which was supposed to be signed off by then-chief executive officer Daniel Matjila, was approved before the PIC\u2019s portfolio management committee had held its first meeting, where it would\u2019ve been introduced, Nemagovhani said.<\/p>\n

In the past year, half of PIC\u2019s executive committee have been suspended or resigned. This includes Matjila, who quit in November, and the executive heads of risk, legal, listed investments, information technology and the company secretary.<\/p>\n

Nemagovhani was asked to follow up on the Ayo matter in December, about five months after the initial report, to \u201cdrill deeper into the root causes and the role players,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This request came from PIC\u2019s acting CEO Matshepo More after the chairman of the board, deputy finance minister Mondli Gungubele, asked for further investigation.<\/p>\n

From a listing price of R43 a share, Ayo\u2019s share price has almost halved to close at R22.50 on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: AYO Technology Solutions sees big jump in revenue<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa\u2019s Public Investment Corp breached policy when it agreed to invest in a local technology company before the deal had received the necessary approvals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":200662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[12679,26],"class_list":["post-295072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it-services","tag-ayo","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295074,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295072\/revisions\/295074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}