DA MP and Federal Finance Chair Mark Burke faces calls for removal from Parliament’s finance committees following allegations against Kastelo and a High Court ruling involving the Reserve Bank.
Dr Mark Burke, the Democratic Alliance’s former federal finance chairperson and finance spokesperson, has long cultivated the image of the squeaky-clean technocrat. The Cheshire cat smile, the carefully modulated lectures on fiscal discipline, the pious sermons about clean governance—these were the props of a party that has spent decades positioning itself as South Africa’s last bastion against the “corruption” of everyone else. That carefully constructed façade has now collapsed under the weight of a South African Reserve Bank investigation into Kastelo, the fintech company he founded and previously chaired.
The central bank’s affidavit alleges that Kastelo systematically circumvented exchange-control regulations to externalise approximately R4 billion. Clients’ Single Discretionary Allowances and Foreign Investment Allowances were allegedly used without their full knowledge. Offshore accounts were opened in clients’ names without some even knowing the accounts existed. The company’s activities were allegedly misrepresented in compliance declarations submitted to the Reserve Bank. This is not a paperwork error or a technical misunderstanding. It is the unauthorised use of other people’s money and identities, the concealment of offshore accounts, and the deception of the central bank. It is financial crime, plain and simple.
