A new twist has emerged in the case involving property tycoon Ralebala “Rali” Mampeule, who has made bribery and corruption allegations against senior Public Investment Corporation (PIC) officials.
This followed the spectacular fallout surrounding a botched R700m loan agreement that involved Mampeule acquiring a stake in the fibre company MetroFibre Networx.
Internal PIC documents reveal that, shortly after the empowerment deal was finalised, Mampeule, through his company Digital Infrastructure Consortium (DIC), made an unusual request for a further R6.6m cash advance from the PIC.
The request was rejected, and the deal collapsed.
Under the agreement the PIC lent Mampeule R700m to purchase a 19.5% stake in MetroFibre. However, in June 2024, just three months after the PIC had transferred the funds, Mampeule requested an additional R6.6m.
This amount was intended to cover R4.3m in outstanding transaction and legal fees dating back to late 2022, as well as R60,000 in monthly payments for three years (with a 7% annual escalation) for working capital.
The request was considered bizarre because, typically in transactions of this nature, beneficiaries are expected to fund their own transaction costs — including legal fees, valuations and audited financials — to ensure they have “skin in the game”.
The PIC’s R162bn unlisted investments division, the Isibaya Fund, has a history of controversy and a high impairment ratio of 51.5%
The request for working capital was also odd because DIC and its special purpose vehicle Levoca 805, which held the MetroFibre shares, were not operational and therefore did not require working capital.
At the time of the request, Mampeule was already in default with two of his creditors, the advisory firm BDO and the law firm TGR Attorneys, who had initiated legal proceedings to recover their debts.
This financial distress constituted a breach of his funding agreements with the PIC, which explicitly required him not to be in default.
Instead of addressing the breach after being put on notice by the PIC, Mampeule threatened to place both DIC and Levoca 805 into business rescue. This move prompted the PIC to activate a clause in the pledge and cession agreement allowing it to seize the shares ceded as security.
A letter from the PIC’s lawyers to DIC in April confirmed the trigger event, citing the summons issued against the company for its failure to pay debts, and advised them of the PIC’s decision to take back the shares.
According to the PIC, Mampeule’s corruption allegations surfaced only after the PIC had begun the process of perfecting its security and taking back the shares.
In a letter sent to MetroFibre, Mampeule revealed he had blown the whistle on the PIC in respect of three of its officials: suspended acting PIC head of unlisted investments Thabiso Moshikara, suspended chief investment officer Kabelo Rikhotso, and head of legal Lindiwe Masina.
However, his formal criminal complaint, lodged in July and August, focused solely on Moshikara, whom he alleged had solicited a R3m bribe.
Mampeule claimed the entire sequence of events, including the PIC taking back the shares, transpired because he refused to pay the alleged bribe.
Mampeule dismissed questions about the deal, his cash request and the timing of his allegations, as “harassment of a whistleblower”.
He referred to a December 2025 ruling by the Randburg magistrate’s court that dismissed a harassment case Moshikara had opened against him and said DIC and Levoca 805 were “currently awaiting our investment payment from PIC for our Metrofibre investment” — a reference to ongoing negotiations over shares he had held for less than a year.
While the PIC did not comment on whether it would pay Mampeule out, the Sunday Times was informed that an internal PIC valuation had put the worth of the MetroFibre stake at just under R1bn, suggesting Mampeule could receive up to R200m.
The PIC firmly denied Mampeule’s allegations this week, calling them “baseless” and noting that “to date no evidence has been shared with PIC, despite several requests”.
Mampeule’s default on transaction fees was the initial trigger event on the agreement, the PIC said, followed by the shareholders’ resolution to place the company into business rescue instead of remedying the breach.
However, the PIC could not provide an update on the status of the investigation or clarify why only Moshikara was suspended among the three officials named in the internal whistleblowing.
Details from Mampeule’s statement to the police offered a potential clue. The document included a WhatsApp screenshot where Moshikara — while in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2024 — appears to ask Mampeule to buy him a pair of prescription Ray-Ban sunglasses.
An internal PIC source indicated Moshikara denied the bribery allegations, arguing the deal had already been board-approved in January 2024, meaning he would not have had the leverage to extract money from Mampeule. He allegedly intended to pay for the sunglasses, but evidence of this intent remains unclear.
The allegations of impropriety at the PIC are not improbable, given the fund’s history of being treated as a feeding trough. Its poor investment performance has often been linked to empowerment deals for the politically connected.
The PIC, Africa’s largest fund, manages R3.6-trillion in government pensions and other funds. Its R162bn unlisted investments division, the Isibaya Fund, has a history of controversy and a high impairment ratio of 51.5%, thanks to legacy transactions dating back to 2011, according to Business Day.
Past controversies include a R1.2bn investment in chicken producer Daybreak that turned to dust, with the company now in business rescue, as well as the recent Acapulco deal, where the PIC was ordered to pay R411m to an empowerment consortium that defaulted on a R333m loan to purchase a stake in Lanseria Airport.
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