Former employees in South Africa to sue IBM for R200 million

Disgruntled former employees of IBM in South Africa plan to take the global technology company to court, alleging that it improperly used more than R200m in pension fund money, enriching itself at the expense of more than 400 pensioners. The Pension group said it would draw finance minister Trevor Manuel into the case, alerting him to the drama as the minister with overall responsibility for the South African pension fund industry.
This is the pensioners’ most public step yet in a long-standing dispute dating back to the mid-1990s and comes at a time when there is a flurry of claims that companies defrauded pensioners out of millions of rands.

The most recent claim was launched by US lawyer Ed Fagan last month, relating to the pensions of former employees of Anglo American.

IBM pension fund trustee Roger Hull said the pensioners would hold a demonstration today outside IBM’s headquarters in Sandton, culminating in the sending of a letter to Samuel Palmisano, the New York-based president of the global information technology group.