South African billionaire Jannie Mouton's $450million school gift now faces criminal probe

Jannie Mouton's R7.2 billion ($450 million) plan to buy out Curro Holdings and convert South Africa's largest private school group into a charity is now the subject of a formal insider trading investigation, after the Financial Sector Conduct Authority escalated what had been a preliminary assessment.

The regulator had previously said only that a statutory market-monitoring body flagged suspicious trades and that the complaint was under assessment. It has not named the parties under investigation, and no findings have been made. Insider trading is a criminal offence under South Africa's Financial Markets Act.

The buyout was pitched as philanthropy on a record scale delist Curro, convert it into a public benefit organisation, reinvest profits into schools and bursaries. Jan Mouton, a foundation trustee and son of the PSG founder, called the R7.2 billion donation "the largest in South Africa's history." A criminal-standard investigation into who traded ahead of it puts that framing under strain.

Moneyweb's analysis of Curro's shareholder registers identified unusually timed transactions by five entities in the six months before the 27 August 2025 announcement, which sent Curro shares up 60 percent in a day.

Citiclient Nominees No. 8, a Citigroup nominee account, added about 7.1 million shares in June and August, then sold 8.7 million days after the announcement an estimated R31 million ($1.9 million) gain. Citigroup declined to identify the beneficial owner, citing policy.

The Public Investment Corporation bought 7.2 million shares in July, a gain of more than R21 million ($1.3 million). The PIC said it had no engagement with Curro or the foundation beforehand and attributed the trade to portfolio rebalancing a negligible sum against the roughly R3 trillion ($188 billion) it manages.

Three entities owned by the Jannie Mouton Familietrust Jan Mouton Beleggings, Piet Mouton Beleggings and My Favourite Beleggings each bought 7.84 million shares between 10 April and 2 May at about R70.14 million ($4.4 million) apiece, roughly R210 million ($13.1 million) in total. Their combined announcement-day gain was about R74 million ($4.6 million), lifting the trust's stake 32 percent to 98 million shares, or 16 percent of Curro. The trades were disclosed to the JSE in April and detailed in the October circular.

Jan Mouton said the purchases were made "in the normal course of long-term investment," with shares then at about R8.70 against net asset value of R12.46, and that he conceptualised the buyout on 17 May weeks after the trust entities bought prompted partly by Bill Gates's 8 May decision to spend down the Gates Foundation endowment by 2045.

PSG chief executive Piet Mouton said the entity names mislead: all three are wholly owned by the family trust and controlled by its six trustees, and he recuses himself from investment decisions involving boards he serves on. Curro was delisted on 13 January 2026.