NEAL Froneman, the outgoing CEO of Sibanye-Stillwater, said he planned to continue serving on the Joint Initiative on Crime and Corruption — a partnership between the South African Presidency and the country’s business sector.
“As far as I understand, they want me to continue; I am happy to continue post my retirement,” Froneman said in an interview with Business Times.
Sibanye-Stillwater announced the retirement of Froneman last week, effective September, and that Richard Stewart, currently COO of the group’s Southern African operations, would be CEO-designate from March.
Froneman said it was important the Joint Initiative on Crime and Corruption continued its work. “This committee is focused on syndicated crimes, it is focused on money laundering and terrorist financing; it is not focused on car thefts or burglaries,” he told Business Times.
“We are starting at the top. We want to deal with the ringleaders in crime, syndicates, and so on,” he added.
“All these activities get money-laundered and it ends up in the wrong hands, financing wars and so on. That is why South Africa got greylisted. If we can show some serious progress it can assist in getting South Africa off the FATF greylist and that will be beneficial for the country and impact crime and corruption,” he said
Froneman also hit back at criticisms that business was only helping out the ANC by contributing towards efforts such as crime-busting as well as public private partnerships in infrastructure repair.
“We are helping the country in the national interest to solve things like load-shedding. That has been very successful and every South African has benefited from it,” he told Business Times.
“Our country is very broken; it has been run down and mismanaged over a long period of time. It is going to take a long time to fix. You don’t resolve engineering issues overnight,” he said.
