All staff: payment incident, 17 September

Colleagues,

On Thursday 17 September a payment of R4 850 000 was released to an account that does not belong to our supplier. The instruction did not come from the Head of Treasury. We are working with the bank and have notified the regulator.

Two points before anyone speculates.

First, nobody is being blamed for this. The colleague who released the payment asked a second person to check it before acting, which is more than most of us would have done. The process we gave him did not help him.

Second, our authorisation policy requires my sign-off above R5 million. The instruction was for R4 850 000. Whoever wrote it knew where the line was.

The mailbox is preserved for review. If you want to understand what we missed, read it.

Marguerite Hallam
Managing Partner