The application to place Fidentia Asset Management under curatorship is justified and the curators should be left to do their job, the Financial Services Board (FSB) said on Thursday.
The FSB’s deputy registrar for financial-services provider, Gerry Anderson, said: ”There was every justification for the FSB to have applied to court for a provisional order placing Fidentia’s financial services business into curatorship.”
Anderson was commenting after Fidentia’s executive chairperson, J Arthur W Brown, embarked on a media campaign, claiming he was innocent of his former company’s problems.
In reports on Wednesday, Brown called the allegations against him lies, and pledged to fight back. He denied that millions of rands were missing from Fidentia.
Moneyweb has reported that close to R2-billion in cash poured into the Cape Town-based Fidentia, but very little could now be traced.
Fidentia is currently under curatorship.
Anderson said the FSB’s decision to apply for curatorship was based mainly on information from ”an extensive inspection into the affairs of Fidentia’s licensed investment management company”.
He said the underlying facts were fully dealt with in the application to court and that the FSB was motivated solely by the interests of those whose money was invested in Fidentia.
”A curatorship order is pronounced by the high court only on good cause shown,” said Anderson.
Before going to court, the FSB considered Fidentia’s response to the FSB inspection report and had four meetings with the company’s lawyers. Fidentia also filed papers with the court in response to the FSB application.
The Cape High Court provisionally appointed curators to run Fidentia until March 27, when the matter is in court again.
Anderson said both Fidentia and the FSB would be entitled to be heard in court.
”In the interim the curators should be allowed to complete their onerous task independently. The FSB is certainly not interfering with them.” — Sapa