When Billions Disappear: What the Maumela Case Teaches Us About Ethics

19 Sept

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Picture this: a family trust linked to a businessman flagged by a murdered whistle-blower rakes in R2.3 billion from state contracts. Only R325 million in assets can be traced and frozen. The rest? Gone — siphoned through luxury cars, mansions, and complex webs of companies. This isn’t fiction. It’s the very real case of Hangwani Morgan Maumela and the shocking revelations that whistle-blower Babita Deokaran paid for with her life.

It’s easy to shake our heads, scroll on, and mutter about corruption. But if we’re honest, these headlines should stop us cold. Because whether we like it or not, this is our field. The people drawing up the tenders, signing the invoices, reconciling the payments, setting the policies, preparing the reports , they’re accountants, bookkeepers, finance managers. People like us.

Our Ethical Responsibility

The International Code of Ethics isn’t just a textbook. It’s a line in the sand. As finance professionals, we are not neutral bystanders. When public money is looted, it’s our neighbours’ medical care, our schools, our infrastructure that suffers.

Our responsibilities are clear:

Professional scepticism: Ask the uncomfortable questions. If a trust is suddenly receiving hundreds of millions, what’s the source? If invoices look suspiciously similar, are we digging deeper?
Courage to act: Ethics without action is just philosophy. It means blowing the whistle, refusing to sign off, resigning when your integrity is compromised. None of this is easy — just ask Babita. But silence is complicity.
Guardians of trust: We are not just number-crunchers. We are custodians of financial systems. If the public can’t trust us, everything collapses.

Why This Matters for CIBA Members

The Maumela saga is a mirror. Do we like what we see? Would we have spotted the red flags? Would we have had the courage to raise them?

As CIBA members, our role is not to wait for regulators or prosecutors to clean up. It’s to set the tone in our firms, our practices, our clients. That means:

Insisting on proper procurement controls and refusing to rubber-stamp weak systems.
Educating clients about ethical risks and refusing to collude in “creative” workarounds.
Building ethical cultures where speaking up is valued and protected.

How Do We Fix This?

We fix it the only way corruption can ever be fixed, one ethical decision at a time.

By refusing to be “cover bidders.”
By flagging conflicts of interest even when it costs us business.
By documenting, questioning, and challenging until the truth emerges.
By making ethics not a once-a-year CPD topic, but the daily standard of our work.

This case is ugly. It’s tragic. But it’s also a reminder: we have the tools to stop this rot. If we choose courage over convenience, if we value integrity over income, then CIBA members can be the professionals who change the story.

Let’s be blunt: without us, corruption thrives. With us — awake, ethical, unafraid — it doesn’t stand a chance.

Access the CIBA Advanced Ethical Decision CPD Here

Our Advanced Ethical Decision Making webinar is ready for replay. In just one hour, you’ll gain a step-by-step framework to handle ethical dilemmas in bookkeeping, accounting, and leadership roles — and build trust through sound professional judgment.

🎯 What you’ll gain: