Jeff Levenstein, the former chief executive of Regal Treasury Bank, has been found guilty on three counts of fraud by Acting Judge Naren Pandya in the South Gauteng High Court.
Judgment, which will continue today, has yet to be delivered on five other charges relating to fraud and contraventions of the Companies Act.
There was a tense moment when the leader of the prosecution team, Clifford McKelvey, called for Levenstein's R50 000 bail to be revoked because he "has become a flight risk".
Each offence Levenstein was convicted of carried a minimum custodial sentence of 15 years. Levenstein, who has been allowed to sit besides his advocate, Michael Werner, instead of being in the dock, looked at him with a noticeably worried face.
Werner, in turn, invoked the name of Schabir Shaik, a convicted fraudster and former financial adviser to President Jacob Zuma, and said that even after conviction, his bail was not cancelled, pending mitigation of sentence.
The judge eventually agreed to extend the bail.
Levenstein was charged with six counts of fraud, two counts of contravening the Companies Act, share manipulation and reckless trading.
Regal collapsed in 2001 after a run on deposits, following the withdrawal of consent for the audit of the company's financial report of 2001 by its auditor, Ernst & Young.
Levenstein was also the chairman of the Regal group from January 1998 until he relinquished his position in September 1999, at the insistence of the registrar of banks.
He was found to have fraudulently misrepresented the financial position of Regal Holdings in May 2000 by claiming that the financial year results had been "audited" at the time of publication, whereas this was not the case.
Levenstein was found guilty of reflecting in the collapsed banking company's financial statements that his total remuneration was R413 000. He omitted a cash bonus of R2 million and the right to 5 million shares valued at about R36m, and an additional R220 000 that had been paid to him between 1999 and 2000.
He was also found guilty of misleading the company's auditors, the Reserve Bank, shareholders and depositors, by saying a sale by Regal Property to Mettle Properties International for R600m of an office development in Sandton was irrevocable and final.