For months, the rumour mill that churns on in the wake of the collapse of the Kebble empire has been spitting out two names: Charles Cornwall and Paul Main. ”Go to Plettenberg Bay and visit the polo estates,” said the tipsters, ”you’ll find answers there.”
But until this week Cornwall and Main — members of Plett’s jet set and aficionados of the rich man’s sport — had managed to stay off the front pages. The publication this week of further details of the forensic investigation into Kebble’s two main companies — JCI and Randgold & Exploration — has thrust both men into the spotlight, Cornwall by name and Main by implication.
Tomb Raider
Cornwall, a British citizen, initially made his fortune as shareholder and CE of United Kingdom-based computer game company Eidos, which created the massively successful Lara Croft — Tomb Raider. He joined Kebble’s JCI as a director in February 2001, some months after resigning from Eidos, following an earlier tumble in the company’s share-price.
Cornwall (43) became a helicopter-travelling member of the Plettenberg Bay set.
Said one acquaintance: ”He was the star of Plett for a while.” Deeds office records show that he bought his Plett home in the old ”millionaire’s row” of Beachy Head Drive for R8,5-million in January 2003. Earlier this year, he registered a bond of more than R13-million against his Beachy Head property.
But polo has been Cornwall’s passion — and probably also the biggest drain on his once-bulging purse. He bought the first part of what was to become his Kurland Park polo estate in the Crags, outside Plett, in early 2002 for more than R3-million.
Over the next two years, he added more portions, purchased for about R10-million. Last year he registered a R30-million bond against the entire property.
Cornwall spared no expense in developing his Kurland polo fields, blasting away part of the ecologically sensitive mountainside to make way for the development.
Commented one Crags resident: ”It must be one of the most expensive polo fields in the world.”
The development was part-financed by a property subsidiary of Tokyo Sexwale’s Mvela Group, in return for a 50% share. But, said a Sexwale spokesperson, the former politician exited the deal on ”a strategic review of his property porfolio”.
Last year, Sexwale bought part of the Constantia Uitsig wine estate in the Cape in a deal brokered by Cornwall.
Cornwall’s blasting at Kurland, and the alleged related contravention of development regulations, eventually led to threats of prosecution by the Western Cape provincial government. It also led to a brief spell of notoriety when it was revealed in late 2003 that he had bid R100 000 at an African National Congress fundraiser to spend two hours with then-environment minister Mohammed Valli Moosa.
When it was pointed that Moosa’s provincial counterpart was at loggerheads with Cornwall, Moosa said he would ask the ANC to repay the money.
Cornwall’s Kurland polo team boasts star players, including Buster MacKenzie, former captain of the national polo team. His wife, Patti, is a former Baywatch star.
Main Man
Like Cornwall, 44-year-old Main is a keen polo player with his own team, Bateleur. Described in a 1995 court case as a ”peripatetic business executive”, Main came to South Africa with his English parents at a young age and became a South African citizen.
According to the court judgement, which detailed Main’s business career and his propensity for taking up with other men’s wives, he left the country with his parents in 1981 to avoid apartheid military service.
During the early 1980s Main came to know Monty Koppel, a Sandton attorney who had begun to work in the United Kingdom.
In the court case, which concerned a dispute about a deal to buy and sell Ferraris, it emerged that Koppel was adviser to a Swiss private fund managing company, Kestrel SA. Main began to do work for Kestrel, assisting on investments in different parts of the world.
According to Kebble biographer Barry Sergeant, Koppel appears to have entered the Kebble saga around 1997 when he advanced cash to help fund Kebble’s bid for control of JCI. Main’s involvement with Kebble followed soon afterwards, when he brokered a deal for Koppel to take a stake in Gem diamonds, which was later sold to Sexwale.
By 1989, Main was married to an American woman and living in England, where, in October that year, the couple attended a shooting party in Leicestershire. Also present were a Mr and Mrs Edmiston.
In the words of Judge MS Stegmann, ”Notwithstanding their respective marriage ties, the defendant [Main] and Mrs Edmiston were immediately taken with each other and they began an affair that brought an end to both marriages.”
Main had business interests in Australia at the time, where he became embroiled in two fraud cases, both of which were eventually withdrawn.
By 1992, he was ensconced with the former Mrs Edmiston and her children at an Oxfordshire estate, but began spending more time in South Africa on business.
Main testified that his company had been retained by the British Airport Authority to assist it in the privatisation of South Africa’s airports, something which still engaged him in 1997.
By 1994, Main’s attachment to South Africa had been further cemented via a new affair, this time with a Mrs Rowand, who left her husband for him a month after they met.
More recently, he married Suzette, the former wife of Richard Gordon, son of Liberty Life founder Donny Gordon. They share a home in Plett.
… and how much they got
New details emerging from the forensic investigation at Randgold & Exploration (R&E) suggest that Brett Kebble’s father, Roger; millionaire computer games entrepreneur Charles Cornwall; and financier Paul Main are among the largest individual beneficiaries of the massive frauds at companies controlled by the murdered businessman.
The first detailed account of how R1,4-billion in shares was stolen from R&E emerged in March during liquidation proceedings against Cornwall’s company, Investage, and the Kebble family vehicle, BNC. A new summary of investigative work done by audit firm Umbono for R&E was released to shareholders this week.
One deal, the 2002 merger of Consolidated African Mines (CAM) and JCI Gold, provides a particularly revealing insight into how assets were smuggled out of R&E.
The Kebbles, through BNC, and Cornwall, through Investage, agreed to underwrite the merger — lending CAM R155-million to ensure that it could buy out minority shareholders.
After the deal went through, CAM changed its name to JCI Limited. Brett, Roger and Cornwall had board seats, and they wanted ”their” R155-million back. So the new JCI effectively agreed to give them R155-million of freshly issued JCI stock. The Kebbles got 188,8-million shares, then worth R85-million, and Cornwall 155,4-million, then worth R70-million.
But the R155-million was not theirs to begin with. Umbono has discovered that the money to fund the original loan to CAM was raised by misappropriating assets from R&E, where Roger Kebble and JCI financial director Hennie Buitendag were on the board. The stolen assets comprised three million shares in DRD gold and 952Â 000 shares in Randgold Resources, a Nasdaq-listed gold mining company that was R&E’s main asset.
The shares were illegally transferred to brokerage accounts and sold for R155-million.
About R90-million from the sale of the DRD shares was ”laundered through a myriad of bank accounts until they found their way into … accounts at Corpcapital Bank in the names of BNC and Investage”, according to the Umbono report.
The Randgold Resources shares raised R64-million, R54-million of which went to Investage and R10-million to pay down an overdraft account Roger Kebble had opened at JCI’s secretive treasury subsidiary, Consolidated Mining Management Services (CMMS).
Cornwall’s 155,4-million shares had all been sold by the end of January 2004, netting a total of R101-million. Most of this went to pay off his personal and company debts.
Some 132,4-million of the Kebbles’ 188-million new shares were pledged as security for a loan to London-based lawyer and financier Montague Koppel. Koppel has apparently claimed ownership of them, adding to a stake in JCI he acquired in partial exchange for the Letseng Diamond mine in Lesotho.
By the time of going to press, Roger Kebble had not responded to a request for comment. Cornwall denied full comment for the time being, saying he had not seen the Umbono report. But, he added: ”I vehemently deny misappropriation of shares or cash.”
Sources sympathetic to Cornwall this week claimed that while the basic facts about his participation in the R155-million loan and receipt of JCI shares in return were accurate, he was not a party to the underlying theft of shares — he had received the proceeds in good faith in consideration of an historical debt Brett Kebble owed him.
Just how financier Paul Main ended up with 900 000 Randgold Resources shares — now R100-million — is not yet clear. The report identifies him only as ”an offshore individual” now holding the shares. But it makes it clear that R&E wants them back.
Barry Sergeant writes in his book Brett Kebble, the Inside Story: ”Several people [look] forward to hearing Main explain, one day, how he came to be sitting on close to R200-million worth of stock in Randgold Resources and Western Areas both before and after Kebble’s death.”
Main failed to return the Mail & Guardian‘s calls this week.
To cover up the hole that the stolen shares left in the asset register at R&E, a further fiction was required — two offshore companies, Kemonshey in Gibraltar, and Notable Holdings in Australia. This laid the basis for the simple story that Kebble stuck to until his death: the stolen shares had been lent by R&E to these companies, and there was paperwork to prove it.
As Umbono has now discovered, these ”loans” were signed by Roger Kebble and JCI director John Stratton, the latter claiming to do so on Cornwall and Brett Kebble’s behalf. With the missing shares ”loaned” rather than ”sold”, they could still be recorded as assets in R&E’s books. Of course, no such loan had ever been made.
Over the next three years close to R1-billion of Randgold Resources shares were spirited out of R&E using a similar mix of fraudulent board resolutions, false brokers note, and fictious lending arrangements as cover.
R&E is claiming at least R300-million from BNC and its predecessor Alibiprops 13, and R54-million from Cornwall’s Investage.
The report also details what it calls ”base claims” of R395-million against CMMS, the ”treasury” division of JCI and R634-million against JCI itself.
