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DA Federal Finance Chairperson, funder and MP, Mark Burke, is unfit to serve on Parliament’s Standing Committees on Finance and/or Appropriations and Public Accounts.

DA Leader Geordin Hill-Lewis said today that he had Burke’s back despite a High Court finding handed down last month that Burke’s company’s scheme of using ordinary South Africans, many on modest incomes, as vehicles to move an estimated R4 billion offshore, in breach of exchange control law, warranted investigation by the Reserve Bank.  

What is alarming about the Burke case is not only the scale of the alleged contraventions by his company, Kastello, but also the modus operandi manipulating the modest wealth of relatively poor people to maximise financial benefits to the privileged.  

According to evidence accepted by the Court (Kastelo (Pty) Ltd v SARB and Others, Case No. 2025-247149, paras 76–79), Kastelo's own bank, Access Bank, discovered that individuals earning around R15 000 a month were extended unsecured loans of around R249,000 – that’s roughly sixteen times their monthly income – in order to be able to access their personal Single Discretionary Allowance and Foreign Investment Allowance limits for Kastelo to move offshore.   

Clients were reportedly offered cash incentives of R2 000 to R10 000 to participate in the scheme, and many were, according to the evidence before the Court, unaware that foreign bank accounts had been opened in their names.

Access Bank found the affordability assessments underpinning the loans "questionable" and clients "potentially over-indebted." That fits the profile of a predatory lending operation, using people who could not realistically service the debt as a conduit to move capital beyond the reach of South Africa's currency controls – not a legitimate fintech offering. 

The Court dismissed Kastelo's application to have SARB's freezing order set aside, and - significantly -ordered Kastelo to pay costs on the punitive attorney-and-client scale, including the cost of two counsel. Courts reserve that scale for cases they consider having had no reasonable prospect of success.

Burke is the DA's Spokesperson on Finance and the party's Federal Finance Chairperson, sits on Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance, and serves as an alternate on the Committees on Appropriations and Public Accounts - the very structures charged with holding Treasury and the Reserve Bank to account.   

While the DA can choose whoever it wishes to speak about finance on its behalf, it besmirches parliament’s integrity for Burke to continue serving as a parliamentary financial watchdog.

GOOD calls on the DA to withdraw Burke from Parliament's finance oversight committees; alternatively, to publicly explain how its Federal Finance Chairperson can credibly oversee financial regulation while his own company is under regulatory investigation for allegedly undermining the same regulations.

Issued by GOOD Secretary-General Brett Herron