The developer of Stellenbosch’s upmarket De Zalze golf estate appeared briefly in Cape Town’s Bellville Regional Court on Monday in connection with fraud and theft charges involving bearer bonds worth over R11-million.
Klaus Strauli, a Swiss national, had been formally arrested by the Scorpions at Cape Town International airport a few hours earlier, after a flight from Switzerland. The arrest took place in the presence of his lawyers.
He was released on bail of R500 000, and will appear in court again on November 3, when a date for his trial will be set, according to prosecutor Bruce Morrison.
The charge sheet says Strauli acted as financial adviser — even though he had no qualifications as one — to Rosa Goldfarb, a wealthy Swiss widow.
Between 1997 and 2000 he allegedly invested Swiss Francs 6 225 000 of Goldfarb’s funds in the De Zalze golf estate outside Stellenbosch.
For this purpose he used a company named Trivag AG, set up as a ”joint-venture vehicle” in which he and Goldfarb had equal shares.
Early in 1998, he bought two bearer bonds, for R5,8 million and R5,6 million, and paid for them with money transferred from the Trivag account.
According to the charge sheet, Strauli told the bank that issued the second bond that the money came originally in part from a real estate deal in Britain by his wife, and in part from a sale of his own assets.
He initially put the bonds up as security for financing for De Zalze, but when the financing did not materialise, he cashed in one of the bonds and put the proceeds into the accounts of a company of which he was sole owner.
He sold the other bond to Goldfarb.
”This sale transaction took place notwithstanding the fact that Goldfarb was joint owner in equal shares of the bond,” the charge sheet says.
”The proceeds of the sale were appropriated by the accused personally”.
It says Strauli gave ”varied versions” of the way he dealt with the second bond, saying both that it had been cashed in so the money could be used on the golf project, and that it had not been bought with Goldfarb’s money.
Goldfarb terminated Strauli’s mandate as her financial adviser in February 2000.
Strauli, whose South African wife Tracy Hazard was in the public gallery when he appeared in court, said in an affidavit handed in to court that he denied all the allegations against him.
He has already handed over his travel documents to the Scorpions, and by agreement with prosecutor Bruce Morrison, he will report to the Stellenbosch police station once a week.
It is understood that Strauli also faces a civil claim, which will come to court in South Africa in November, and criminal proceedings in Switzerland.
Morrison is also the prosecutor in the Roodefontein golf estate corruption trial, where former Western Cape premier Peter Marais and his environment provincial minister David Malatsi are accused of accepting bribes from the Italian would-be developer Riccardo Agusta. — Sapa