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Investigative Journalism award for Moneyweb

26 Oct 2004

The winning entry for the R100 000 prize for The Media/Valley Trust Award for Investigative Journalism has gone to Barry Sergeant, Investigations Editor, Moneyweb, for a story exposing corporate corruption, entitled: "Accounting Pulp Fiction".

The judges were unanimous in their view that Sergeant's submitted piece completely captured the ethos of the competition - it was an outstanding example of the media's inherent ability to expose corporate corruption. Sergeant's story on CS Holdings (CSH) was published on Moneyweb after other media published a 'vanilla', re-hashed version of the company's upbeat assessment of their unaudited six month financial results on February 10, 2003.

Moneyweb's report was based on a thorough scrutiny of the published results. Says Sergeant: "It wasn't the easiest stance to take. The CSH CEO at the time, Annette van der Laan, was something of an icon. She had won numerous awards as a businesswoman, and served on various professional accounting entities."

Sergeant's article on Moneyweb, "Accounting Pulp Fiction", certainly had results.

Two weeks after the publication of the Moneyweb article, Van der Laan "resigned" as CEO with immediate effect. Her ex-husband, Hans van der Laan, also had his consultancy contract with CSH terminated with immediate effect. By that time, a number of investigations had already been instituted into CSH, not least by its two major shareholders, Reunert, a large listed company, and Worldwide Africa Investments Holdings (WAIH), an unlisted black economic empowerment (BEE) entity. The JSE Securities Exchange was also investigating the case, as was, apparently, the Financial Services board (FSB).

The judges of the competition were: The Hon. Mr. Justice Cloete of the Supreme Court of Appeal; Professor Tawana Kupe of Wits University; V. Bray, ex-Chairman of JCI/Western Areas; and Kevin Bloom of The Media magazine. Taco Kuiper, who was the fifth member of the panel, passed away on 24 September after a long illness.

"It was Taco's wish that we complete the competition," said Bloom, "and we deeply regret that he did not live to see the award presented. All the judges are in agreement that this piece of fine investigative journalism clearly reflects his intentions. We congratulate Barry and Moneyweb for their accuracy, fortitude and interpretation."