A six-day gambling spree.
A banking system glitch.
A R2.6 million debt.
And now, a provisional sequestration order.
The Cape Town High Court has ruled in favour of Investec Bank Ltd, placing the estate of Western Cape resident Izak Petrus van Zyl under provisional sequestration after finding him factually insolvent.
Van Zyl had argued that the debt arose from a bank systems failure and that the bank should not be allowed to rely on its own mistake to bankrupt him.
The court disagreed.
How a system error spiralled into millions
In February 2025, Investec experienced an internal systems error that disabled balance checks for certain tokenised transactions. As a result, payments were processed even when accounts lacked sufficient funds.