Selebi’s choice of friends. Not only are there unresolved questions about Varejes’s involvement in the Tigon affair, but Varejes is close, in turn, to Andrew Phillips, the sex entrepreneur and National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) target.
A philanthropist
Selebi’s explanation is that his relationship with Varejes is all about philanthropy. Asked to comment for this article, Selebi’s office would only say: ‘If the Mail & Guardian is interested in the nature of the national commissioner’s relationship with Mr Gavin Varejes, a representative is welcome to attend a function on Thursday evening — at the Royal Durban Golf Club.â€
The function related to an initiative by Selebi to rehabilitate street children. Selebi and Varejes were both to attend, the latter in his capacity as president of the South African Rugby Legends Association, which supports the street children initiative.
Varejes said his company, Richmark, also made donations to police rugby, police athletics and the police widows’ and orphans’ fund.
South Coast sojourn(s)
It is common cause that Selebi has holidayed at Uvongo Falls, an imposing development at Uvongo, a resort town south of Durban.
It was reported in 1999 that Phillips, the sex entrepeneur, and Varejes were buying the ‘ultra luxurious†development. While Phillips does not appear from formal records to be Varejes’s co-owner, he, nevertheless, enjoys access.
Varejes confirmed that Phillips — whom he called a ‘life-long†friend but denied sharing business interests with — was his intended co-purchaser of Uvongo Falls, but he said Phillips was not included in the final deal ‘as a result of a change in Mr Phillips’s personal and financial circumstancesâ€.
This, it appears, was the direct consequence of a highly public February 2000 raid conducted by police and the NPA’s asset forfeiture unit (AFU) on Phillip’s Sandton brothel-and-strip club complex, The Ranch and Titty Twister. Phillips was arrested and the complex placed under AFU Âcuratorship.
The AFU subsequently raided 19 of his properties on December 22 that year, attaching assets now valued at about R58-million.
Phillips’s trial on prostitution-related charges, perjury and employing illegal aliens has yet to be finalised. He has pleaded not guilty.
It now appears that as Phillips’s stand-off with the NPA was coming to a head, Selebi may have been vacationing with Varejes at Uvongo Falls.
According to a source formerly associated with The Ranch, Phillips was involved in making arrangements for Selebi’s stay at Uvongo Falls in December 2000, although once there, Selebi was actually hosted by Varejes.
Varejes denied there was such a visit.
By early 2001 Varejes himself was under serious pressure. Tigon, the financial services group that was later to collapse amid scandal, sued Varejes and a business partner, Tony Strike, for R210-million, claiming the duo had fraudulently misrepresented the value of EuroPoint, a cellular accessories business they had sold to Tigon. In November 2001, during the course of the same litigation, Tigon heaped serious criminal allegations of VAT fraud on Varejes and Strike.
Varejes confirmed that the following month, December 2001, Selebi holidayed at Uvongo Falls. He denied there was anything improper about this and presented the M&G with copies of bank documentation showing Selebi had paid R10 000 to his company Brethil Developments, which owns Uvongo Falls.
During 2002, Varejes and Strike turned the tables on their accusers at Tigon, particularly Gary Porritt, its MD. Police and South African Revenue Service (Sars) officials raided Tigon’s accountants in November and Porritt was arrested in a blaze of publicity in December.
It is common cause that Varejes and Strike played a role in these events — Strike had given information to Sars, while Varejes confirmed to the M&G: ‘At the commencement of the Porritt investigation members of the SAPS (including Mr Selebi) and Sars came to my house to gather information about Porritt and Tigon.â€
Varejes denied he had any further interactions with Selebi regarding Porritt or Tigon.
Selebi allegedly holidayed at Uvongo Falls again immediately after Porritt’s arrest. In a court affidavit, Porritt associate Sue Bennett claimed: ‘Varejes boasts of and appears to enjoy special status with the SAPS.
‘I am aware that Varejes was telephoned by the Commissioner of Police, Jackie Selebi, to advise him of the imminent arrest of [Porritt] and, immediately after that arrest, commissioner Selebi and his family then spent the Christmas holidays as guests of Varejes at his luxurious seaside holiday establishment at Uvongo on the South Coast.â€
Mauritian getaway
While Varejes denied Selebi had visited Uvongo Falls in December 2002 after Porritt’s arrest, he has confirmed to helping Selebi with separate holiday arrangements around that time.
When he emailed bank documents last week to show Selebi had paid for his 2001 Uvongo stay, a further deposit slip was included without explanation: R24Â 265 from Selebi to Vo-Call Cellular, a subsidiary of ÂVarejes’s Richmark Holdings, in March 2003.
Varejes this week said that the payment ‘relates to the reimbursement of monies disbursed by one of my companies on behalf of Mr Selebi in order to secure a booking for Mr Selebi’s wife and two sons to travel to Mauritius on holiday. I made this invoice available to you in my previous letter in the interests of making a full disclosure of my dealings with Mr Selebi.â€
Varejes said Selebi had refunded the full amount shortly after his company had paid for the trip. ‘It was always intended that Mr Selebi would pay for the holiday, which he did.â€
Further questions are raised by the fact that Vo-Call and another Richmark subsidiary, Cellfind, are partners with Vodacom in a contract with the police. The contract appears to be to establish a facility for members of the public to SMS crime information to the police. The value of the contract could not be established.
According to Varejes, the contract was awarded in November last year — well after Vo-Call had arranged Selebi’s trip.
Varejes confirmed his companies would benefit, but denied it was ‘secured as a result of any intervention on the part of Mr Selebiâ€.
The M&G has two accounts from businessmen suggesting, however, that Varejes may not have been above using his connectivity to obtain contracts from the police. One told the M&G that Varejes had provided an introduction to police — although not to Selebi directly — when he (the businessman) wanted to punt an IT solution.
Another businessman told how Varejes was introduced to him as someone ‘connected to Jackie [Selebi]â€. Varejes was to have helped him acquire police business in return for a commercial arrangement between them. The police business did not materialise.
Varejes and the Tigon collapse
Gavin Varejes came through one of South Africa’s most notorious corporate scandals virtually unscathed: the 2002 collapse of Tigon, which cost shareholders R250-million.
Criminal and civil proceedings aimed at mopping up the mess are still years from conclusion.
At their centre are Garry Porritt, the scheme’s alleged chief architect, and Sue Bennett, his aide. They now face charges ranging from fraud to theft and racketeering.
They allege, in turn, that the roots of the disaster lay not in their misdeeds but in frauds committed by Varejes and business partner Tony Strike.
That is certainly not the whole story, but there are enough contradictions in the record to suggest Varejes and Strike may have been let off the hook, and to raise fresh questions about why Selebi once again participated directly in an investigation involving one of his friends.
The Tigon ‘scam’
Seeking to list Tigon in London, Porritt allegedly went on an asset-buying spree to bulk up its value. To fund acquisitions without strict regulatory oversight, he sought investment through an unlisted vehicle, PSC Guaranteed Growth.
Some cash raised went to buy Tigon shares, inflating their value, and some apparently went straight into Tigon’s bank account.
According to the state’s indictment, Porritt also misrepresented Tigon’s value. As questions about Tigon’s underlying worth mounted, and investors scrambled to sell out, the scheme began to unravel. When information supplied by Varejes and Strike led to an investigation in which Jackie Selebi involved himself personally, Porritt was arrested and his companies collapsed completely.
Tit for tat
Porritt has insisted in court papers that the Varejes and Strikes intervention was not motivated by concern for good governance. Twenty months before his own arrest he had begun legal proceedings against them, claiming they had fraudulently inflated their cellular accessories company Europoint’s profits before its sale to Tigon, and that while probing its accounts he came across company tax and VAT scams from which Varejes and Strike personally benefited.
The VAT fraud allegations
In April 2001 Porritt launched a court action against Varejes and Strike, saying he had evidence of fraud and had appointed forensic auditors to scrutinise Europoint’s books.
Six months later he approached the court with a new allegation: Europoint’s income, reflected in internal records, could not be squared with sales figures disclosed to the taxman. VAT returns submitted to the South African Revenue Service had resulted in substantial refunds being paid to Europoint, but if sales were as high as they seemed to be from the company’s books, no refund should have been due, Porritt said.
Either sales had been inflated to mislead potential buyers about the company’s value, or Sars had been ripped off.
Porritt alleged that Varejes and Strike had helped cover up the accounting hole their VAT scheme created by making out cheques totalling almost R1,8-million to Sars, supposedly to repay the ‘erroneous†refunds. The cheques never reached Sars, however. According to Porritt, Strike and Varejes were the ultimate beneficiaries.
Enter Grant Ramsay, of Europoint’s auditors, Simon Hurwitz, and ‘financial adviser†to Varejes and Strike.
In a 2001 affidavit, Ramsay said that in July and September 1997 he received cheques from Europoint signed by Varejes and Strike in favour of Sars. Instead of being paid over, these were deposited via the Simon Hurwitz trust account into his own trust and then transferred to Varejes and Strike.
Ramsay includes copies of the relevant cheques and bank statements to support his claims.
In his 2001 affidavit Ramsay states: ‘The deposits— were made on the instructions of Varejes and Strike.â€
Varejes, however, says that Porritt’s claims are untrue and Ramsay’s evidence was ‘subsequently belied and contradicted by Ramsay himself in confessions made by him to the authoritiesâ€.
Those confessions came later, when Varejes and Strike were winning a successful fightback campaign, and Ramsay was trying to plea bargain his way out of a long jail term. They are, on the face of it, inconsistent with other evidence.
Strike-back
Varejes’s and Strike’s response to Porritt’s damning claims was Âcounter-accusation: in late 2001 Strike approached Sars with allegations against his accuser and Ramsay.
These were successful, despite the fact that he initially implicated himself in the process. Probing companies for which Simon Hurwitz was accounting officer a Sars investigator discovered — and explained in an affidavit — that 240 of the companies had an assessed tax loss totalling R855-million, and that between 1996 and 2002 profits of nearly R166-million were offset against these — suggesting a major tax fraud.
Strike also claimed that Ramsay had conducted the VAT scam alone, and had effectively stolen the cheques that had been intended for Sars.
The investigator chose to believe him: ‘I humbly submit that it is highly improbable that cheques would be made out to Sars if they were intended for other purposes, as alleged by Mr Ramsay,†he concluded, ignoring the obvious benefit of hiding the real VAT payments in Europoint’s own books.
Sars raids in November 2002 led to Ramsay’s and Porritt’s December arrests. Jackie Selebi personally played a part in the investigation, as Varejes confirmed this week.
It was against this backdrop that Ramsay dramatically changed his story. He negotiated a reduced sentence in return for his testimony against other alleged tax dodgers — including Porritt — and for coming clean about the fictitious losses he had created to help his clients cut their tax bills.
In a volte-face, Ramsay now agreed with Strike’s account, claiming to have misappropriated Europoint’s VAT payments himself and concocted the refund scheme to cover his tracks.
This new version of the story seems implausible. For it to work as Ramsay describes, time would have had to elapse between the initial VAT payment, the receipt of a refund from Sars, and the theft of legitimate cheques sent to Sars. But the documentary evidence in the court record shows that the original VAT payments, and follow-up faked payments, were made on the same day.
Nonetheless, Ramsay’s new account was accepted, and he spent less than two years in jail.
As for Varejes and Strike, National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Panyaza Lesufi confirmed this week that an investigation by the specialised commercial crime unit, which combines NPA prosecutors with police investigators, into a 2001 complaint laid by Porritt was still open, but cautioned against expectations of a speedy resolution.
‘It is not envisaged that the investigation would be finalised in the near future due to the nature of the case,†he said.
Strike did not reply to messages left at his office.