Atiyah Patodi and Singer [Spectral asymmetry and Riemannian geometry III] write that if $E$ is a complex flat bundle (non holomorphic, just smooth and complex) on a compact manifold $X$ (more generally a CW-complex) there must be some positive integer $m$ such that the direct sum
$E\oplus E\oplus\cdots\oplus E$ ($m$ times) is a trivial bundle.

Of course since the Chern character is an isomorphism from $K^\bullet(X)\otimes \mathbb{Q}$ to $H^{2\bullet}(X;\mathbb{Q})$, we know the bundle $E$ (or, more precely its K-theory class) is torsion in topological K-theory but this only tells us that $E\oplus E\oplus\cdots\oplus E$ is stably trivial.

I checked an impressive amount of literature on characteristic classes without finding a clue.
Several authors cite directly Atiyah who, however, does not prove the claim.

Other authors say that the above statement cannot be true.

Does someone know the answer ?