Why is it that nearly three years after the notorious Brett Kebble quit as CEO of Randgold & Exploration, JCI and Western Areas, those who helped him pilfer millions still haven’t been called to account?

The answer, it seems, lies in the unwillingness of the authorities to hold people to account. 

Take the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (IRBA), which has now halted its probe into whether global auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) broke the rules by signing off the accounts at Brett Kebble’s Randgold & Exploration (Randgold) before 2003.

This is yet another example of the sluggish efforts to hold to account those who assisted Kebble siphon more than R2bn out of Randgold and JCI in a series of elaborate schemes dating back to 2000.

In April 2006, the IRBA promised swift and decisive action in April 2006, with new CEO Kariem Hoosain saying he was “not going to wait” for an official complaint to be lodged.

But more than two years later, the IRBA probe appears to have stalled, and Hoosain has resigned. In March, Randgold issued a R7,6bn summons on PwC — the largest claim against any auditor in SA — which PwC said it would defend.

Bernard Agulhas (pictured), the acting CEO of the IRBA, says Randgold’s R7,6bn claim has put its investigation on hold as “we don’t want to do anything to influence that case”.

But this seems like a thin excuse for doing nothing, especially when those auditing firms are still out there doing business. “Look, our investigation is at a stage where we don’t have sufficient evidence to go out and make statements yet. So we don’t want to prejudice any other processes,” Agulhas says.

It seems strange that the IRBA struggled for evidence when forensic auditing firm Umbono appeared to have found enough information to believe action was warranted.

Umbono found, for example, that Randgold’s financials for 2003, which were signed by PwC, “grossly misrepresent the financial position of the company”.

For one thing, PwC signed accounts that said Randgold owned shares it didn’t. A key part of this was Viking Pony, an empowerment firm which Randgold bought for R268m in 2002.

Umbono found that “to justify the purchase consideration, fictitious investments in Aflease (7,3m shares), Harmony Gold (315000 shares) and Anglo Platinum had been created by way of false brokers’ notes”.

PwC signed off Randgold’s accounts every year between 2000 and 2003 — the last audited set of accounts before the company was suspended from the JSE and Nasdaq in 2005.

Fulvio Tonelli, PwC’s chief operating officer, says it seems most likely that the first time this case will see the inside of a court is 2010 or 2011. This means the earliest the IRBA will make any finding will be after that — more than six years after the companies were suspended from trading on the JSE.

Tonelli doesn’t believe Randgold has a basis for its claim “and we will defend it vigorously. We’re confident [of] the quality of our work … it’s in the nature of our business to face claims like this.”

Marais Steyn, Randgold’s CEO, says his company now aims to get “full discovery” of PwC’s working papers.

But the IRBA’s soft touch in the past hasn’t gone unnoticed. A hearing convened in 2005 by its predecessor, the Public Accountants’ & Auditors’ Board, cleared Ernst & Young of improper conduct for signing off accounts of Regal Bank that were incorrect.

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