Hijackers on board

Flying the friendly, fraudulent skies [View this email in your browser]( December 5 2022 [Mail & Guardian]( [Mail & Guardian]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Instagram]( [YouTube]( Hi there, In his book [The Great Crash: 1929]( American economist John Kenneth Galbraith introduced the term “bezzle”, an important concept that is better known among economists but is understood by anyone who came of age on the internet or has recently been following the rise of non-fungible tokens. Bezzle finds its origins in the word embezzlement, which Galbraith called “the most interesting of crimes”. He wrote: “Alone among the various forms of larceny, [embezzlement] has a time parameter. Weeks, months or years may elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery. (This is a period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.) At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in — or more precisely not in — the country’s business and banks…” To put it plainly, a bezzle is that golden moment, which may stretch from a minute to years, where a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated and the victim of a fraud does not yet understand that he has lost it. Every bezzle ends … eventually. On Tuesday, Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo handed over the first of three reports to President Cyril Ramaphosa — noting that South African Airways, the national carrier, “declined during the tenure of Ms Myeni to an entity racked by corruption and fraud”. [Dudu Myeni]( according to the report, knowingly made misrepresentations to the public enterprises ministry that caused financial losses to the beleaguered airline. “It is likely that her conduct constitutes the crime of fraud,” the report reads, noting the commission’s recommendation that the National Prosecuting Authority investigate whether Myeni should be prosecuted for fraud. Zondo devoted more than half of the report to issues at SAA and its affiliates — the first [447 pages of a 874-page report]( — where he found that former president Jacob Zuma’s personal friend and confidante was incompetent and acted with corrupt intent. Corruption flourished at SAA and its associated companies because those companies were managed to benefit the interests of a “select few”. When Myeni appeared before the commission, she refused to answer questions relating to the alleged misrepresentations, citing her privilege against self-incrimination. Myeni, the commission found, abused this privilege. Zondo recommends that Myeni be charged with fraud. Myeni had operated SAA “under a cloud of fear, intimidation, secrecy and paranoia, when a public entity should be operated transparently and with accountability to the South African people who fund its operations”, Zondo said. According to this Jessica Bezuidenhout [report from March 2017]( this behaviour tracks. Before Myeni was declared a delinquent director, SAA had spent millions of rands in taxpayer funds to investigate alleged impropriety by senior executives. Often those investigations were triggered by anonymous tip-offs, but it is alleged that these were sometimes authored by Myeni herself. And how do we know this? We have [Yakhe Kwinana]( to thank for that tidbit of information. Myeni’s former board colleague and friend claimed at the time that she had first-hand knowledge of how Myeni abused the airline’s whistleblower facility. Kwinana alleged that Myeni collected dirt on senior staff, which she documented in a notebook. She later surreptitiously emailed these to the airline’s whistleblower facility from an internet café in Sunnyside, Pretoria. In Zondo’s report, Kwinana — the erstwhile chairperson of South African Airways Technical (SAAT) — also gets a dishonourable mention. With the pair at the helm there was a “steady decline in the quality and effectiveness of the governance of SAA from 2012 onwards”. “During both their tenures, acts of corruption and fraud took place at SAA and SAAT. Committed managers, who tried to stand up to the increasingly unreasonable and unlawful demands of these board members, were slowly but surely removed from their positions". The report further recommends that the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants should investigate whether Kwinana has the requisite knowledge and appreciation of her obligations as a chartered accountant and whether she is suitable to continue to practise the profession. Whether the relevant authorities will finally prosecute Myeni and her associates remains to be seen. State capture is not just regular malfeasance. It’s about a network of facilitators aiding and abetting the fraud. And its effects will be felt for years to come. After years of inaction and seemingly being untouchable, perhaps it is cynical to assume the work of the whistleblowers, journalists and investigators who made the Zondo commission’s promulgation possible will go in vain. “From the time of her appointment as chair, many people within SAA and officials in government attempted to speak out against Ms Myeni and to stop her from wreaking havoc at the [state-owned enterprise]. However, all attempts to criticise or remove her were met with resistance at the highest level. Two successive ministers of finance were, despite their efforts, unable to remove her from office. In 2016, Minister Gordhan was forced to replace the entire board of SAA to ‘mitigate the harm’ that its chair had caused, and would likely continue to cause, to the entity,” Zondo said. It’s enough now. Until tomorrow Kiri Rupiah & Luke Feltham [Subscribe now]( Enjoy The Ampersand? Share it far and wide. [Share]( [Share]( [Tweet]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( [Forward]( [Share]( [Share]( Copyright © 2022 Mail & Guardian Media LTD, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in to receive communications from the Mail & Guardian either at our website or by taking out a print subscription. Our mailing address is: Mail & Guardian Media LTD 25 Owl St BraamfonteinJohannesburg, Gauteng 2001 South Africa [Add us to your address book]( Want to change which mails you receive from Mail & Guardian? [Update your preferences]( to tell us what you do and don't want to receive, or [unsubscribe](. *If you are a paying subscriber, we recommend updating your preferences rather than unsubscribing, as you may miss important information relating to your subscription.