Three secret microphones and a hidden camera were discovered in Fidentia’s Cape Town boardroom in a sweep for electronic bugs after curators took over the business, the city’s magistrate’s court heard on Friday. This emerged during a bail application by Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown and fellow director and accountant Graham Maddock.
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown last year offered to quit his position in a bid to stave off curatorship, according to a document handed in at his bail hearing on Thursday. The document, a letter from Fidentia’s lawyers to the Financial Services Board, was attached to an affidavit by Brown setting out the reasons he thought he should be granted bail.
Negotiations between the Richtersveld community and the government on an out-of-court land-claim settlement are back on track, according to community leader Willem Diergaardt. He was speaking after a 45-minute meeting on Tuesday morning with Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin, in the minister’s Cape Town office.
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown, the man at the centre of what could be South Africa’s biggest-ever corporate-investment scandal, is behind bars. He and group accountant Graham Maddock were arrested by the Scorpions at their luxurious Cape Town homes shortly after 8am on Tuesday.
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/ 28 February 2007
City of Cape Town officials held a long meeting with counterparts from the 2010 local organising committee on Wednesday in a bid for a solution to the financing of the proposed Green Point Stadium. The city this week stalled on approving the R2,7-billion budget for the project after what mayor Helen Zille said were last-minute cost escalations of R180-million.
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/ 22 February 2007
South Africa’s four frigates got their first black captain on Thursday when former Umkhonto we Sizwe operative Bravo Mhlana formally assumed command of the SAS Isandlwana. He was handed a brass ”telescope of command” at a blustery quayside ceremony attended by President Thabo Mbeki’s wife, Zanele, and navy top brass in the Simon’s Town navy docks.
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/ 21 February 2007
To tax lobola, or not to tax: that is the question that Finance Minister Trevor Manuel does not want to touch with a barge pole. He told MPs in his budget speech on Wednesday that last year he received a suggestion he should make lobola, the traditional payment for a bride, tax deductible.
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/ 21 February 2007
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel on Wednesday paid tribute to teachers as ”the front line of our education system” — and then matched his praise with hard cash. ”The investments announced in this budget constitute a concerted effort to improve the quality of schooling in our country,” he told the National Assembly.
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/ 21 February 2007
The government wants to have its ”bold and ambitious” new social-security scheme, that could include a R30 billion-a-year wage subsidy, in place by 2010, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel announced on Wednesday. Manuel told Parliament the planned budget surplus created space for future social-security reforms.
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/ 21 February 2007
South Africa is to set an official ”poverty line” as a tool to help measure progress in the fight against the problem, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Wednesday. A poverty line establishes the income required for a basic minimal standard of living, enough for an adequate food supply and other necessities.