Paul Kirk
An ingenious scheme to make millions out of Road Accident Fund claims has backfired after a smooth-talking lawyer skipped the country with stolen funds in excess of R34-million.
Before leaving South Africa last month Ian Stokes disposed of his expensive assets for a fraction of their value, selling his penthouse to Springbok rugby player Stefan Terblanche. Then he disappeared, leaving his wife to give birth to his first child alone and penniless in her parents’ home.
The funds that Stokes allegedly stole are made up in part of money that the dapper lawyer allegedly looted from his own trust funds. But he has also disappeared with millions invested by foreign and local business people. Some of the business partners he brought into his company include former and current Durban policemen some with close links to organised crime.
The policemen and other investors had pumped millions into a company called R&I Promotions that was formed by Stokes.
Former associates of Stokes say he told investors that fortunes could be made from Road Accident Fund claims. In his sales pitch he allegedly explained that the fund takes a great deal of time to pay out claims. He then told potential investors that most people making claims needed the pay-outs sooner rather than later.
Stokes proposed to buy Road Accident Fund claims from claimants for 60% of their value. His scheme consisted of first paying claimants 42% of the value of their claims upfront and, in exchange, having them sign a document giving R&I Promotions full title to all the payments made out by the fund.
When the fund paid out sometimes only a year or more later another 18% would be paid to the victim. The other 40% of the claim value was profit for Stokes.
Stokes’s former associates say he told investors that the service he offered was legal and of real value to road accident victims.
To reassure investors he informed them that he had sought opinion from renowned Durban senior counsel Kemp J Kemp, who had given the opinion the scheme was completely legal. But perhaps most significantly Stokes offered investors a 100% return on their investments. He needed capital to get his business going. Blinded by the prospects of a quick return investors coughed up millions.
Now dozens of speculators have been left penniless. Stokes has fled the country to the United Kingdom, claiming he has squandered the R34-million.
However, his former business partners say only a few months ago his trust account was audited and found to be in order. They say it is unlikely he could spend the money so rapidly, and even if the audit had missed a few problems with the trust fund it could hardly have missed R34-million.
They also point out that only a few months ago his heavily pregnant wife, Carla, made an unexpected trip to Mauritius. They now suspect this trip was undertaken to take money out of the country and open foreign bank accounts.
Peter Schoerie, the attorney liquidating Stokes’s estate, says he has taken more than R200 000 worth of jewellery from Stokes’s wife.
He says he has also discovered “substantial amounts” of cash deposited in the Channel Islands by the young lawyer.
Stokes’s former business partners are keen to track him down amid widespread speculation that he may suffer physical harm when he is found.
Stokes’s scheme involved a number of firms. His R&I Promotions handled the discounting of claims. But another two firms were also involved. One of these was Acciclaim, which was set up by Captain Craig Marteens of the Durban murder and robbery unit. Marteens made his money by selling Road Accident Fund claims to Stokes for a commission.
Another firm, Claim Direct, also operated to supply files to R&I Promotions. Stokes had a share in Claim Direct. In the company’s heyday one of its directors, Gary Canning, a well-known security company boss and former policeman, chartered flights or flew business class around the country and booked into the top hotels while opening up branches of Claim Direct.
The business scheme attracted many members of the police elite in Durban. An Inspector Deon Pretorius, formerly of the vehicle theft unit, then joined Stokes in his business enterprise and most importantly brought his wife into the scheme.
In order to make claims the firm needed the services of a commissioner of oaths to take down statements from claimants under oath.
Pretorius is married to Inspector Tracy Pretorius of the notorious organised crime unit in Durban the unit Piet Meyer once headed.
She commissioned hundreds of statements on behalf of the company. However, liquidators have now discovered that the policewoman commissioned many claims she could not possibly have taken her-self. Some affidavits show she was in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg on the same day at roughly the same time.
Schoerie said his auditing team was “weeding through” the claims in search of any “possibly fraudulent” documents.
The people who worked in the offices of Claim Direct, at 133 Windermere Road in Durban’s plush Morningside suburb, look set to lose lots of money.
Among them is Bruce Bekker, the former Koevoet policeman and one-time murder and robbery unit detective, out on R100 000 bail for his part in a conspiracy to deal in drugs and an alleged contract killing of a rival bouncer.
Also set to be out on the street is bodybuilder and former cop Steve Azor, whose wife claimed he was a key crime figure in Durban at the time of their divorce.
In papers filed in the Durban High Court she alleged he was involved in numerous assaults and attacks on rival gangsters.
However, the Road Accident Fund claimants Stokes signed up will be paid out.
In order to wind up Stokes’s estate, Schoerie, the liquidator, has set up a team to process the claims bought by Stokes. Schoerie said the police will start a full-blown investigation after he has finished going through the books.
Stokes’s whereabouts are still not known. However he has been in contact with one of his former partners, who would not be named.
Breaking down in tears as he spoke, Stokes is alleged to have claimed that his theft was the manifestation of a “disease”. He begged for forgiveness and claimed to be penniless. His air ticket was originally booked so he could return to South Africa last Friday, which he failed to do.