The North Gauteng High Court has granted an order to liquidate VBS Mutual Bank.

This after the South African Reserve Bank's Prudential Authority applied for the final liquidation of the mutual bank.

The bank's curators have previously identified its financial state "as hopelessly insolvent" and that there was no prospect of it being saved.

President Cyril Ramaphosa said previously that VBS could rise from the ashes to serve the poor as was intended. Ramaphosa was speaking in the National Assembly at the time, where he was responding to questions on the matter.

He said the report released by the Reserve Bank on the matter presented a "deeply disturbing picture" of theft and corruption on a massive scale.

"It is essential for all those responsible for facilitating this fraud, this corruption, and those who benefited must be held accountable," he said.

Ramaphosa said the monies stolen from the bank's depositors – mainly pensioners who put their life savings into VBS – must be recovered.

"We must act against those responsible for destroying VBS, and all those in private companies and state-owned enterprises and other parts of state trying to steal our country's future."

The problem with the bank is that it is laden with a great deal of debt and the only way to clean it is to put it into liquidation, Ramaphosa added.