Anoj Singh did not need a cent of his Transnet salary for 36 months

Do you want to learn how to save? Former Transnet finance boss Anoj Singh has explained how savings allowed him to fund his lifestyle without having to touch his salary for 36 months on the trot.

Singh was testifying at the state capture inquiry on Friday.

The inquiry, which summonsed Singh’s bank statements, established upon analysis that the FNB account into which his Transnet salary was paid to showed no activity between July 2012 and July 2015.

As a result, the balance in the account in July 2015 stood at R19m as he left the company to assume his new job at Eskom the following month as CFO.

Evidence leader advocate Anton Myburgh quizzed Singh about how he funded his lifestyle during this time.

Singh, after a brief protest about the question, said his savings prior to July 2012 were how he financed his needs over the three-year period.

“It goes to the point that the commission has documents of my other bank accounts. The bank statements you have indicate the lifestyle was funded from those accounts,” said Singh.

Grilled on why he had as many as 12 bank accounts with FNB, Singh said they were not all money accounts as some would have been things such as a fuel account and the likes.

Singh had kept his salary untouched for three years in a zero-interest account. It was only in 2016 that he moved the funds to a money-market account that attracted interest of R100,000.

Why wait so long to move money to accounts that bear interest?

“There was a need for me to maintain this account to have liquidity. At some point I was approached by a private banker who suggested the money market account. 

“That is the reason I opened the money market accounts.”

Myburgh was in disbelief that an accountant of Singh’s stature who managed the financial affairs of a large state-owned company like Transnet needed a private banker to tell him the obvious.

Singh stuck to his guns, saying he paid more attention to the finances of Transnet than his personal financial affairs. 

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