A curatorship order against troubled asset-management firm Fidentia was made final by a Cape High Court judge on Tuesday.
The company was placed under provisional curatorship at the beginning of last month after a Financial Services Board (FSB) probe reported alleged misappropriation of hundreds of millions of rands.
”The curatorship order is made final now, which means we can act more decisively and get on with the process of establishing where the assets are,” joint curator Dines Gihwala told journalists after the brief hearing.
He said that ”optimistically” it would take two to three years to finalise the matter.
”It’s quite complicated. In terms of our preliminary findings there are any number of assets which seem to be in the names of other entities, and we still have to connect that, and there may be a fight in terms of who really owns that, and where the money came from.
”So it’s going to be a long, drawn-out process.”
Tuesday’s ruling by Judge Burton Fourie was not opposed by Fidentia.
Counsel for the FSB Ashley Binns-Ward told the judge that notice of opposition had been filed, but that the advocate representing Fidentia contacted him on Monday night and said that notwithstanding the notice, no one would appear in court to argue it.
”Matters have been sorted out directly with the curators,” Binns-Ward said.
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown and company accountant Graham Maddock were arrested by the Scorpions on March 6 on charges of fraud and theft involving provisionally just over R200-million.
They were released on bail of R1-million each.
‘I’m going home’
Brown was released from custody last Thursday after his R1-million bail was unexpectedly paid on his behalf.
Magistrate Eric Louw had granted Brown and Maddock bail on Monday, but ruled that any surety they offered had to meet the approval of the Scorpions.
Maddock was released after putting up R100 000 cash and a Cape Infanta property as surety.
The Scorpions rejected Brown’s offer of his luxury home at Sunset Beach in Cape Town on the grounds that it was bought with the proceeds of crime, and said a second property offered was also tainted.
The unit also rejected a property in Kimberley, registered in the name of the wife of a former Fidentia colleague of Brown’s, Martin van Schalkwyk, saying the property of a third party would not be enough to hold Brown in South Africa.
It maintained there had to be a link between Brown and a property for it to be acceptable.
His advocate, Klaus von Lieres, handed the cheque to Scorpions prosecutors moments after a Cape Town magistrate ruled that property belonging to a third party was acceptable as surety for bail.
Brown was met at the exit of the court by a group of overjoyed former Fidentia employees, who burst into song as he emerged.
”I’m going home,” they sang, waving their hands in the air and embracing him, drawing a smile as they escorted him to a nearby hotel.
”I don’t know whether Mr Brown wants to make any statements other than to say he’s very pleased that the matter has been resolved at last, and that he can get on with his business,” Von Lieres told the South African Press Association after the bail was paid to the clerk of the court.
Asked where the million rand came from, Von Lieres said: ”I’m sorry, it’s another party, but I’m not prepared to discuss that.”
Brown’s personal accounts have been frozen by the Reserve Bank, Absa has cut off his access-bond facility on his luxurious home at Cape Town’s Sunset Beach, and his wife’s business has been provisionally liquidated. — Sapa