About R368m has been repaid to the investing public in the past two years from various illegal deposit-taking schemes, some of which were pyramid or Ponzi schemes. Unathi Kamlana, head of the policy, statistics and industry support department at the Prudential Authority (PA) at the SA Reserve Bank (Sarb), confirmed that these repayments were made from assets seized from TVI Travel and Marketing Agency CC, Defencex and other schemes. Moneyweb reports that Kamlana was speaking at a briefing on the latest annual report of the PA, the regulator responsible for the promotion of the safety and soundness of individual financial institutions. Kuben Naidoo, deputy governor of the Sarb and CEO of the PA, said the regulator spent a significant amount of resources to try to close down these schemes, in some cases to recover money and then to find the beneficiaries of the monies it recovered. ‘It’s quite a significant part of the work of the PA although it is fairly distinct from the supervision of financial institutions,’ he said.