‘WE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT INVESTMENT’

MANZINI – The Enlightened Christian Gathering (ECG) Church, a local branch of Prophet Shepherd Bushiri, says it has nothing to do with the news doing the rounds in South Africa.

It was reported by SA publication TimesLive that some emaswati have reportedly lost money in an investment scheme that went bust, which had been introduced by certain pastors of the republic’s church though it had no direct links to it. However, they did not invest in the scheme via the Eswatini branch.

Scheme

The Sunday Times, a South African newspaper, revealed that the said scheme had links to Prophet Bushiri’s church, and that some investors feared they had lost their investments of hundreds of thousands of Emalangeni after investing in Merger Chen Solutions (MCS).
Public Relations Officer for the Manzini-based branch Welile Mbambo said he was aware of the investment scheme, but that it had nothing to do with the church.
“We as ECG Eswatini branch, are a church/ministry, and the above matter involves a private entity separate from the church. As a church we comply with the statutory regulations of the country in terms of church registration, and submitting of tax returns as well as independent audited financial statements as per the requirements of all churches that affiliate under our mother body in Swaziland,” Mbambo said.

Meanwhile, TimesLive quotes a woman who fell victim to the collapsed fund, identified as Florence Mangwane, from Eswatini, but living in Mpumalanga. “I am from Swaziland and this is my church. I took my money, R150 000, and my husband put R200 000 into this. We lost it all,” she said.
Her husband, Ernest Mangwane, said they were ready to fight for their money.

The Sunday Times said: “It was said that about 250 members of the Mpumalanga branch of Bushiri’s Enlightened Christian Gathering church had reported the losses to church leaders and to the Hawks. The members had invested the money with a senior pastor at the church, Nicholus Mgiba, who is CEO of Merger Chen Solutions (MCS).” The paper quotes Hawks spokesman Hangwani Mulaudzi saying they were investigating the reports.
Other investors from Limpopo, the Eastern Cape and Gauteng, were also affected. In Mpumalanga, members said they had invested R10m.

According to the scheme, the paper said, those who invested R200 000 were promised R11.5m after six months. Those who invested R1m were promised R57.6m in six months. Most investors were said to be retired people.
“In a meeting this week at Bushiri’s Pretoria church, senior pastors allegedly told investor representatives that Shepherd Bushiri Investments (SBI) had also ‘been defrauded’. Shepherd Bushiri Trading, a subsidiary of SBI, invested congregants’ money in a fraudulent scheme, investors were told,” the newspaper states.

Refunding

According to investors, church leaders who addressed them said Bushiri had tried his best to take responsibility, including refunding many people who had invested with his company.
The investors showed the Sunday Times a WhatsApp message they claimed had come from church leaders. It said: “SBI, as his personal business, has now appointed a law firm to assist in the investigation and is trying to recover whatever it can from these fraudsters.”
The WhatsApp message also said: “It is unknown at this moment as to how long the process will take and how much will be recovered, or if there will be anything to be recovered.”

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