Businessman Kholofelo Maponya is legally challenging the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) and SA Home Loans for R45 million in origination transaction fees linked to a deal that he didn’t initiate after failed attempts to questionably extract the money from the two entities.
Maponya has been trying to wrestle the transaction fees out of SA Home Loans since 2016. They relate to a R9 billion loan that was extended by the PIC to mortgage funding company SA Home Loans. The loan was meant to provide home financing opportunities for members of the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF).
In 2014 the PIC, on behalf of the GEPF, acquired a 25% stake in SA Home Loans and assisted Bolatja Hlogo Consortium, represented by Maponya, in acquiring another 25%.
The collective 50% equity had belonged to JP Morgan, which had initiated talks with the PIC to dispose of its shareholding to a party that had enough liquidity and the will to assist the company if necessary. The remaining 50% is held by Standard Bank South Africa.
SA Home Loans chief executive Kevin Penwarden on Wednesday provided the PIC commission of inquiry with a timeline of events showing how the R9 billion loan facility came to be. He explained that it was one of the items covered when JP Morgan presented the business case for the PIC to acquire its 50% equity stake in the company to former PIC chief executive Dan Matjila in June 2012.
The discussions carried on for the rest of that year, with Penwarden stating in his testimony that it was “clear” that JP Morgan and SA Home Loans were the first parties to make this proposal to the PIC.
Maponya would only come into the picture in 2013, when the PIC introduced him as the black economic empowerment partner whose consortium would share the JP Morgan shareholding with the PIC.
When the equity transaction was concluded in June 2014, Maponya was appointed as a non-executive director on the SA Home Loans board on behalf of the consortium while Matjila’s assistant, Wellington Masekesa, represented the PIC.
