EFF SUBMISSION OF A COMPLAINT AGAINST MARK BURKE TO THE JOINT COMMITTEE AND MEMBERS INTERESTS
BY: CHANON LECODEY MERRICKS | ONLINE EDITOR
EFF SUBMISSION OF A COMPLAINT AGAINST MARK BURKE TO THE JOINT COMMITTEE AND MEMBERS INTERESTS
The Economic Freedom Fighters has today, Monday 24 August 2026, formally lodged a complaint against the Democratic Alliance Member of Parliament, Mark Burke, to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Ethics and Member’s Interests. The complaint emanates from the potentially criminal conduct by Kastelo Proprietary Limited, a financial services company co-founded by Mr. Burke, and for which he was the Chairperson until recently. The details of potential criminal conduct by Mr. Burke’s company were exposed by the recent judgement of the South Gauteng High Court, in terms of which the Court rejected an application by Kastelo to unfreeze its accounts with Access Bank Limited.
The accounts were frozen by the Reserve Bank after the Reserve Bank, Access Bank itself, and some of Kastelo’s clients reported suspicious transactions which were in violation of South Africa’s exchange control regulations. These transactions cumulatively are in excess of R4 billion. If true, these transactions would be classic illicit financial flows, a perverse practice long flagged by the EFF as a major contributor to the denuding of our tax base by corporate thugs.
The transactions took place right under the leadership of Mr. Burke, who was deployed by the DA to be its main member at the Standing Committee on Finance. One of the entities reporting regularly to this Committee is the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). Mr. Burke sat at committee meetings at which the SARB was reporting to Parliament, never recused himself from these meetings, while fully knowing that a company he owned was involved in direct litigation against the SARB. He held the position of Founder and Chairman of a company at the centre of one of the largest live exchange control matters before the Reserve Bank, while sitting as a full member of the Committee that Parliament entrusts with oversight of the very institution investigating that company.
Whatever the outcome of the Reserve Bank's investigation into Kastelo, Mr Burke's own position at the intersection of that investigation and Parliament's financial oversight was in itself, a risk to public confidence that Parliament's oversight of the country's monetary and exchange control system is exercised without fear, favour, or private interest. In so doing, Mr. Burke violated his ethical duties as outlined in the “Code of Ethical Conduct and Disclosure of Member’s Interests for Assembly and Permanent Council Members of 2024”. It is our view that Kastelo’s actions, and Mr. Burke’s role in the decision-making process at Kastelo, and his shamelessness in continuing to sit in meetings of the Standing Committee on Finance, were a gross violation of the ethical standards expected of Members of Parliament.
This directly impacts on the mandate of the Joint Committee on Ethics and Member’s Interests, and it is for this reason that we have formally lodged our complaint to the Committee. We will carefully monitor the response of the Committee, and take all reasonable steps to ensure that Members of Parliament such as Mr. Burke are held to account for using parliament as a cover for the commission of commercial crimes in this country.
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