I was liquidated over a fictitious R7 million loan, says Durban businessman
In what must rank as one of the most bizarre legal cases in recent times, Durban-based businessman Ian Brakspear had his family business liquidated in 2009 for a R7 million bank loan he says he never asked for or received.
And, he claims the signature on the liquidation order that stripped him of everything he owns has been forged. It’s not just Brakspear saying that. The police and a top-flight forensic investigator agree with him.
Either he is delusional – as the opposing attorney claims – or he has stumbled on something rotten in the justice system.
Brakspear, as you can imagine, is pretty angry at the unfortunate turn his life has taken of late. The R7 million which was supposedly loaned by Nedcor-owned Fairbairn Private Bank in Jersey to the Westley Trust, of which he was a beneficiary, is a complete fiction, he says.
“The loan never happened. It was all based on fraud. From start to finish. I’ve been cleaned out.”
Up until this point he was a reasonably wealthy man – a successful futures trader, and beneficiary of a UK brewing business established by his father.
He was doing alright. He once owned a beautiful 87ha wine estate in Franschoek, with the Ruperts as neighbours on the one side and Tokyo Sexwale on the other.
What could go wrong?
Well, as it turns out, just about everything. Today, Brakspear – having lost just about everything in the liquidation – is now under threat of losing his house and whatever else he still owns. He went from millionaire to pauper in the blink of a banker’s eye and was forced to send his mother to the UK where she now lives in a friend’s garage.
Declaratory order
We’ll get to how the liquidation came about in a minute. But let’s fast forward a bit. Brakspear is now seeking a declaratory order from the Durban High Court to determine whether a liquidation order based on a forged court registrar’s signature is legal and binding or null and void. If null and void, then he will apply to have the whole liquidation set aside. If legal and binding, he will then apply to have the liquidation set aside on the grounds that it was based on a fraud.
Should he succeed in his declaratory order, the ensuing damages claims against Nedcor and its subsidiaries should be large enough to melt a few faces at Nedbank’s head office at 135 Rivonia Road in Sandton. Even if he doesn’t succeed in the Durban High Court, he plans on taking the case all the way to the Constitutional Court. Nedcor’s attorneys say he doesn’t stand a snowball’s hope in hell, and are now preparing to sequestrate him.
How did Brakspear end up in this position?
This all goes back to 2008 when West Dunes Properties 5 (Pty) Ltd, the company set up to acquire the wine farm in Franschoek, was placed in liquidation. But let’s wind back the clock to happier times, around 2003, when money was seemingly plentiful and the property boom was in its infancy. The Franschoek farm – called Klein Normandie – came on the market, and Brakspear teamed up with some partners to acquire and develop the property. They approached Nedbank Private Bank to see if they could raise a mortgage bond, and the subject turned to offshore structures and how everyone was doing it. Brakspear already had an offshore trust, the Brakspear Trust, registered in the Isle of Man. These were the days when South Africans were being suckered into shady offshore structures they knew little about. Smooth talking bankers were parachuted in to Johannesburg and Stellenbosch to round up the suckers and ship their money abroad where they could be fleeced for outrageous fees.
Brakspear was persuaded to move funds from the Brakspear Trust in Isle of Man to Fairbairn Private Bank in Jersey. Noseweek covered the story in 2010, showing how convoluted was the structure set up by the bankers: “The bank would set up a new trust, the Westley Trust, which would invest the money in a specially created company on the British Virgin Islands, which would provide a bank guarantee to a South African holding company, which would borrow the money locally (using the guarantee) to buy the shares in another company, West Dunes Properties, set up to buy the farm.”
Brakspear had no idea what was going on, but he slept soundly believing he had the best bankers money could buy on his side.
When the bankers decided to fire the old trustees and replace them with trustees of their own, Brakspear didn’t bat an eyelid. He thought they knew what they were doing. After all, they were his bankers.
In anyone’s book, this is a disaster waiting to happen. Having bankers as your trustees while arranging bank loans and guarantees on your behalf….
“Yes,” concedes Brakspear. “I woke up too late.”
Disaster arrives
The disaster wasn’t long in coming. The trust secured a guarantee of £500,000 (then worth about R7 million) which made it possible for RMB to advance a mortgage loan for the wine estate. Brakspear later found out that his partners had paid R4 million more for the farm than they let on, and pocketed the difference. He eventually booted the partners, only to find that the farm itself was a black hole that swallowed money faster than it coughed it out again.
It wasn’t long before West Dunes fell behind on its bond payments, and RMB called up the R7 million guarantee.
It was all downhill from there. Brakspear attempted to sell the farm and rid himself of the headache. He found a buyer for R37,75 million – a good R18 million more than he paid for it. That would have been an elegant exit from an otherwise fraught business engagement, but then MD of Fairbairn Trust, Justin Thomas, let on to the buyer that this was a distressed sale.
Enter the vultures. The R37,75 million offer suddenly disappeared and RMB attached the farm and put it up for auction at R18 million. The same buyer who previously offered R37,75 million managed potentially to save himself R18 million simply by withdrawing his offer and picking up the farm at auction.
Brakspear’s UK counsel, Adv Philip Sinel, sums up his argument in a letter to the opposing counsel: "The first major falsehood put forward by the Fairbairn group was designed to produce some excuse for bankrupting West Dunes and thus preventing suit against the Fairbairn Group for damages consequent upon its breaches of trust." (This relates to Justin Thomas' cock-up wherein he let the buyer know the farm sale was distressed, thereby reducing the potential sale price from R37,75 million to R18 million).
And, Sinel again: "…the Fairbairn Group and its advisors have now invented an indebtedness by Westley to JAMBOT (the Brakespear family trust)."
What Sinel is saying is that the Fairbairn Group were terrified Brakspear would come after them for the R18 million loss in property value caused by Justin Thomas' indiscretion. According to Brakspear, they then decided the best defence is attack: liquidate him and suck the oxygen out of his lungs.
Liquidation
ENS brought the application for liquidation in December 2008, brandishing an affidavit from one Nico Theo Botha, who purported to be chairman of BOE (a Nedbank acquisition) which, according to the Hawks, he most certainly was not. Botha claimed that Westley Trust had advanced the R7 million in June 2008 to West Dunes at the “latter’s special insistence and request” and that the loan was was due and payable in December 2008 and was now in default.
Brakspear was the sole director of West Dunes. He would surely have known whether or not he had asked for and received an amount of R7 million. This is where it gets murky.
“I was the only person who had the authority to bind West Dunes to any contractual obligation,” says Brakspear. “I had no knowledge of this loan, and West Dunes made no request for this loan, made no board resolution to authorise any borrowings or enter into a loan contract and absolutely did not sign any loan contract. These are the documents I have been asking to see for five years, plus proof of payment and bank statement depicting payment of this loan. To date I have received nothing. Zilch.”
There is no dispute that RMB called up a guarantee of R7 million on 5 July 2007 and the money flowed out of the Brakspear Trust via Fairbairn Private Bank to RMB to reduce the bank’s mortgage bond exposure on the wine estate. Brakspear had no problem with this – he wanted to get rid of the wine farm and reduce his exposure to the bank. But this money belonged to the Brakspear family trust. In other words, says Brakspear, it was family money. It was not a loan. The records show it was reflected as a distribution from the trust to Brakspear. When West Dunes was liquidated in 2008, this distribution suddenly became a loan that was owed to the bank. The liquidators of course have an entirely different view of this, and argued that there was indeed a loan that had been made, and that Brakspear is trying to fudge the issue with futile legal arguments.
That's not your money, it's ours
If this sounds all too weird and complex, hang in there. What Brakspear is saying is equivalent to a bank paying you out your own hard-earned money, and then coming back to you 18 months later and saying the money you took is not yours, it was a loan and now you better pay it back.
So where is the loan agreement? I visited the offices of ENS and spoke to attorneys Leonard Katz and Justine Hoppe, who represented Nedcor in this matter, and put the question to them.
I was shown a loan facility agreement made out by Fairbairn Private Bank in Jersey (later acquired by Nedcor) and Fairbairn Trust re: Westley Trust, reflecting the fact that a facility for R4 million had been made available. This was dated May 2004, and was in any event repaid by the Brakspear Trust on 30 July 2008. I was also shown a "guarantee and indemnity" in consideration for certain bank facilities made available to the Westley Trust by Fairbairn Private Bank. It was undated and unsigned by the Fairbairn Private Bank representative.
But still no loan agreement for R7 million.
“You do realise that loan agreements do not have to be in writing,” said Katz.
Huh? You mean a bank will lend R7 million based on a handshake?
Katz: “Is there a nice neat loan agreement that says here are the parties that on such a day the loan was (advanced)? No there’s not. We made a best assessment as lawyers where the contractual relationships lay. There’s no doubt in my mind that Westley Trust is a creditor.”
Brakspear is buying none of it. He has accused the Nedcor group of perverting the course of justice to secure a fraudulent winding up order.
Evidence
These are serious accusations against a bank with deep pockets, so Brakspear had better have some convincing evidence to back up his claims of fraud and skulduggery.
As it turns out, he does. Let’s start with the Hawks, the elite police investigations unit.
The first question we need answered is whether Judge Balton actually granted the provisional liquidation order in the Durban High Court on 23 December 2008. Here’s what the Hawks found:
Exhibit A: High Court stenographer and IT manager, Strinivasan Naidoo, claims in an affidavit presented to the Hawks that there is no record of the Brakspear liquidation case ever taking place in the Durban High Court on 23 December 2008. This was the date that the provisional liquidation order was supposedly granted. This order was made final in February 2009, and there is a transcript available of this hearing. But what actually happened in court on the day of the provisional liquidation hearing is hotly disputed. Naidoo says Judge Balton presided on other matters on that day, but not the Brakspear case.
(Katz says in his replying affidavit that the matter was heard in chambers by Judge Balton on 23 December, and the provisional liquidation order was granted that day. ENS typed up the order, as is common in such cases, and took it to the court registrar for signing, though he has no recollection of who signed.)
Exhibit B: Court Registrar Chetty who supposedly signed the provisional liquidation court order for the Brakspear case on 23 December 2008 confirms in an affidavit to the Hawks that the signature on the court order is not hers and has been forged.
Exhibit C: Forensic document examiner, Yossi Vissoker, says the signature on the court order is not by the hand of Ms Chetty and, after comparing it to her actual signature, adds: “the dissimilarities are shocking.” After examining several other court orders supposedly signed by Ms Chetty, he goes on: “The need to forge Ms Chetty’s signature wasn’t a once off occasion, but an ongoing occurrence in the court. The purpose of which is unknown to me.”
This in itself should set the entire Durban court system alight. Of course, it may be that other people in the office are signing on behalf of the registrar, but forging Ms Chetty’s signature?
It begs the question: how many liquidation orders with forged signatures have been issued by rogue elements operating out of the Durban court?
But wait, there’s more.
Exhibit D: An affidavit by Lt Mbhele, the Hawks’ investigating officer, states: “When the liquidation was eventually heard at the high court, it is clear that most of the documents have been created. The signatures on important documents are fraudulent and I base this on the statements of the responsible officials.”
The court officials interviewed by the Hawks found the documents riddled with flaws, while there is no record of the hearing ever having taken place.
There is no dispute that the lawyers actually turned up at court on the day of the provisional liquidation. Leonard Katz and Justine Hoppe of ENS were the appointed attorneys for Nedcor, with counsel Brendan Manca SC and Juliette Nicolson assigned the task of arguing the bank’s case in court. Brakspear’s attorney Fiona Scott and his appointed counsel Sydney Alberts also showed up.
What happened next is something of a mystery. Brakspear says he opposed the winding up order from the outset, and instructed his lawyers accordingly. If this is the case, his lawyers defied his instructions and sold him down the river. In an affidavit drafted last year, Brakspear’s then attorney Fiona Scott says she phoned her client from the court on 23 December 2008 to keep him apprised of developments and that “despite us opposing the merits, it would be to the advantage of West Dunes Properties to consent to the Order being taken….” This would mean the farm would no longer go on auction for R18 million, but could be sold to the Rupert-controlled company Applemint Properties 9 for a much fatter R25,2 million. Brakspear, after being briefed along these lines, consented to the order being granted, according to Scott.
No so fast, says Brakspear. “I always opposed the liquidation. I would never consent to a provisional liquidation that was based on fraud.”
But it was too late. Judge Balton granted the provisional liquidation order…or so it seemed.
Exhibit E: Does Judge Balton remember the case perchance? Apparently not. In a letter to Brakspear deputy Judge President Jappie says he spoke to Judge Balton and the registrar for Judge Gorven (who gave the final liquidation order) and neither recall hearing the matter.
I asked Katz about the accusation of the forged signatures on the court order, as alleged in the Hawks investigation: “It’s complete crap, man. Have you read the affidavit? It’s totally fucking illiterate."
Katz further says it is not his responsibility to attend to court administrative issues. “If there’s something funny going on in the registrar’s office how can it be my fault?”
And: “There’s only one thing more delusional than Brakspear and that’s…Lt Mbhele’s letter, it is beyond belief.”
I put it to him that his paper trail in this case was not clean. “My paper trail is completely clean,” he fired back.
The Hawks investigators twice held meetings with Nedbank and Nico Theo Botha, the employee who deposed on behalf of the bank. Botha was represented by his lawyers at these meetings, according to the Hawks.
“I have found out that there is no copy of the request by West Dunes for a R7 million loan from Westley Trust in June 2008,” according to a statement from Lt Mbhele of the Hawks.
“There is no copy of proof of R7 million payment by Westley Trust Jersey to RMB in or about June 2008.
“There is no copy of receipt of R7 million by RMB in or about 2008.”
Further, the Hawks found no evidence that the Westley Trust had R7 million in the first place to lend to West Dunes, and – damningly – “there is no evidence that Nico Theo Botha was the chairman of BOE, no evidence that Nico Theo Botha had personal knowledge and could swear positively to the facts contained in the affidavit (presented in the liquidation hearings)."
What will an attentive judge make of all these facts? Brakspear attempted to have his case heard late last year, but the judge said his papers were missing. Another strange twist to this tale. Brakspear says they were not missing. “They were sitting all correctly filed in the senior court registrar’s office. Someone had created a file - what the registrar called a ‘dummy file’ and placed that dummy file in front of the judge. They tell me it is an old trick to delay the matter from being decided on. The Court Registrar, a Mrs Bothma, has got both the dummy file and the original file under lock and key and the offices of the Minster of Justice and Chief Justice have been notifed of this irregularity. ”
In any event he has since taken on a new attorney to help him get the case heard in an open court. He also plans to take on Fairbairn Private Bank (acquired by Nedcor) in the UK courts. This, after all, is where his trouble all started.
We await with interest the court's deliberations on this rather fascinating case. Either Brakspear is delusional as the opposing attorney says, or has the bank attempted – as Brakspear alleges – to pervert the course of justice?
Watch this space….
And, he claims the signature on the liquidation order that stripped him of everything he owns has been forged. It’s not just Brakspear saying that. The police and a top-flight forensic investigator agree with him.Either he is delusional – as the opposing attorney claims – or he has stumbled on something rotten in the justice system.
Brakspear, as you can imagine, is pretty angry at the unfortunate turn his life has taken of late. The R7 million which was supposedly loaned by Nedcor-owned Fairbairn Private Bank in Jersey to the Westley Trust, of which he was a beneficiary, is a complete fiction, he says.
“The loan never happened. It was all based on fraud. From start to finish. I’ve been cleaned out.”
Up until this point he was a reasonably wealthy man – a successful futures trader, and beneficiary of a UK brewing business established by his father.
He was doing alright. He once owned a beautiful 87ha wine estate in Franschoek, with the Ruperts as neighbours on the one side and Tokyo Sexwale on the other.
What could go wrong?
Well, as it turns out, just about everything. Today, Brakspear – having lost just about everything in the liquidation – is now under threat of losing his house and whatever else he still owns. He went from millionaire to pauper in the blink of a banker’s eye and was forced to send his mother to the UK where she now lives in a friend’s garage.
Declaratory order
We’ll get to how the liquidation came about in a minute. But let’s fast forward a bit. Brakspear is now seeking a declaratory order from the Durban High Court to determine whether a liquidation order based on a forged court registrar’s signature is legal and binding or null and void. If null and void, then he will apply to have the whole liquidation set aside. If legal and binding, he will then apply to have the liquidation set aside on the grounds that it was based on a fraud.
Should he succeed in his declaratory order, the ensuing damages claims against Nedcor and its subsidiaries should be large enough to melt a few faces at Nedbank’s head office at 135 Rivonia Road in Sandton. Even if he doesn’t succeed in the Durban High Court, he plans on taking the case all the way to the Constitutional Court. Nedcor’s attorneys say he doesn’t stand a snowball’s hope in hell, and are now preparing to sequestrate him.
How did Brakspear end up in this position?
This all goes back to 2008 when West Dunes Properties 5 (Pty) Ltd, the company set up to acquire the wine farm in Franschoek, was placed in liquidation. But let’s wind back the clock to happier times, around 2003, when money was seemingly plentiful and the property boom was in its infancy. The Franschoek farm – called Klein Normandie – came on the market, and Brakspear teamed up with some partners to acquire and develop the property. They approached Nedbank Private Bank to see if they could raise a mortgage bond, and the subject turned to offshore structures and how everyone was doing it. Brakspear already had an offshore trust, the Brakspear Trust, registered in the Isle of Man. These were the days when South Africans were being suckered into shady offshore structures they knew little about. Smooth talking bankers were parachuted in to Johannesburg and Stellenbosch to round up the suckers and ship their money abroad where they could be fleeced for outrageous fees.
Brakspear was persuaded to move funds from the Brakspear Trust in Isle of Man to Fairbairn Private Bank in Jersey. Noseweek covered the story in 2010, showing how convoluted was the structure set up by the bankers: “The bank would set up a new trust, the Westley Trust, which would invest the money in a specially created company on the British Virgin Islands, which would provide a bank guarantee to a South African holding company, which would borrow the money locally (using the guarantee) to buy the shares in another company, West Dunes Properties, set up to buy the farm.”
Brakspear had no idea what was going on, but he slept soundly believing he had the best bankers money could buy on his side.
When the bankers decided to fire the old trustees and replace them with trustees of their own, Brakspear didn’t bat an eyelid. He thought they knew what they were doing. After all, they were his bankers.
In anyone’s book, this is a disaster waiting to happen. Having bankers as your trustees while arranging bank loans and guarantees on your behalf….
“Yes,” concedes Brakspear. “I woke up too late.”
Disaster arrives
The disaster wasn’t long in coming. The trust secured a guarantee of £500,000 (then worth about R7 million) which made it possible for RMB to advance a mortgage loan for the wine estate. Brakspear later found out that his partners had paid R4 million more for the farm than they let on, and pocketed the difference. He eventually booted the partners, only to find that the farm itself was a black hole that swallowed money faster than it coughed it out again.
It wasn’t long before West Dunes fell behind on its bond payments, and RMB called up the R7 million guarantee.
It was all downhill from there. Brakspear attempted to sell the farm and rid himself of the headache. He found a buyer for R37,75 million – a good R18 million more than he paid for it. That would have been an elegant exit from an otherwise fraught business engagement, but then MD of Fairbairn Trust, Justin Thomas, let on to the buyer that this was a distressed sale.
Enter the vultures. The R37,75 million offer suddenly disappeared and RMB attached the farm and put it up for auction at R18 million. The same buyer who previously offered R37,75 million managed potentially to save himself R18 million simply by withdrawing his offer and picking up the farm at auction.
Brakspear’s UK counsel, Adv Philip Sinel, sums up his argument in a letter to the opposing counsel: "The first major falsehood put forward by the Fairbairn group was designed to produce some excuse for bankrupting West Dunes and thus preventing suit against the Fairbairn Group for damages consequent upon its breaches of trust." (This relates to Justin Thomas' cock-up wherein he let the buyer know the farm sale was distressed, thereby reducing the potential sale price from R37,75 million to R18 million).
And, Sinel again: "…the Fairbairn Group and its advisors have now invented an indebtedness by Westley to JAMBOT (the Brakespear family trust)."
What Sinel is saying is that the Fairbairn Group were terrified Brakspear would come after them for the R18 million loss in property value caused by Justin Thomas' indiscretion. According to Brakspear, they then decided the best defence is attack: liquidate him and suck the oxygen out of his lungs.
Liquidation
ENS brought the application for liquidation in December 2008, brandishing an affidavit from one Nico Theo Botha, who purported to be chairman of BOE (a Nedbank acquisition) which, according to the Hawks, he most certainly was not. Botha claimed that Westley Trust had advanced the R7 million in June 2008 to West Dunes at the “latter’s special insistence and request” and that the loan was was due and payable in December 2008 and was now in default.
Brakspear was the sole director of West Dunes. He would surely have known whether or not he had asked for and received an amount of R7 million. This is where it gets murky.
“I was the only person who had the authority to bind West Dunes to any contractual obligation,” says Brakspear. “I had no knowledge of this loan, and West Dunes made no request for this loan, made no board resolution to authorise any borrowings or enter into a loan contract and absolutely did not sign any loan contract. These are the documents I have been asking to see for five years, plus proof of payment and bank statement depicting payment of this loan. To date I have received nothing. Zilch.”
There is no dispute that RMB called up a guarantee of R7 million on 5 July 2007 and the money flowed out of the Brakspear Trust via Fairbairn Private Bank to RMB to reduce the bank’s mortgage bond exposure on the wine estate. Brakspear had no problem with this – he wanted to get rid of the wine farm and reduce his exposure to the bank. But this money belonged to the Brakspear family trust. In other words, says Brakspear, it was family money. It was not a loan. The records show it was reflected as a distribution from the trust to Brakspear. When West Dunes was liquidated in 2008, this distribution suddenly became a loan that was owed to the bank. The liquidators of course have an entirely different view of this, and argued that there was indeed a loan that had been made, and that Brakspear is trying to fudge the issue with futile legal arguments.
That's not your money, it's ours
If this sounds all too weird and complex, hang in there. What Brakspear is saying is equivalent to a bank paying you out your own hard-earned money, and then coming back to you 18 months later and saying the money you took is not yours, it was a loan and now you better pay it back.
So where is the loan agreement? I visited the offices of ENS and spoke to attorneys Leonard Katz and Justine Hoppe, who represented Nedcor in this matter, and put the question to them.
I was shown a loan facility agreement made out by Fairbairn Private Bank in Jersey (later acquired by Nedcor) and Fairbairn Trust re: Westley Trust, reflecting the fact that a facility for R4 million had been made available. This was dated May 2004, and was in any event repaid by the Brakspear Trust on 30 July 2008. I was also shown a "guarantee and indemnity" in consideration for certain bank facilities made available to the Westley Trust by Fairbairn Private Bank. It was undated and unsigned by the Fairbairn Private Bank representative.
But still no loan agreement for R7 million.
“You do realise that loan agreements do not have to be in writing,” said Katz.
Huh? You mean a bank will lend R7 million based on a handshake?
Katz: “Is there a nice neat loan agreement that says here are the parties that on such a day the loan was (advanced)? No there’s not. We made a best assessment as lawyers where the contractual relationships lay. There’s no doubt in my mind that Westley Trust is a creditor.”
Brakspear is buying none of it. He has accused the Nedcor group of perverting the course of justice to secure a fraudulent winding up order.
Evidence
These are serious accusations against a bank with deep pockets, so Brakspear had better have some convincing evidence to back up his claims of fraud and skulduggery.
As it turns out, he does. Let’s start with the Hawks, the elite police investigations unit.
The first question we need answered is whether Judge Balton actually granted the provisional liquidation order in the Durban High Court on 23 December 2008. Here’s what the Hawks found:
Exhibit A: High Court stenographer and IT manager, Strinivasan Naidoo, claims in an affidavit presented to the Hawks that there is no record of the Brakspear liquidation case ever taking place in the Durban High Court on 23 December 2008. This was the date that the provisional liquidation order was supposedly granted. This order was made final in February 2009, and there is a transcript available of this hearing. But what actually happened in court on the day of the provisional liquidation hearing is hotly disputed. Naidoo says Judge Balton presided on other matters on that day, but not the Brakspear case.
(Katz says in his replying affidavit that the matter was heard in chambers by Judge Balton on 23 December, and the provisional liquidation order was granted that day. ENS typed up the order, as is common in such cases, and took it to the court registrar for signing, though he has no recollection of who signed.)
Exhibit B: Court Registrar Chetty who supposedly signed the provisional liquidation court order for the Brakspear case on 23 December 2008 confirms in an affidavit to the Hawks that the signature on the court order is not hers and has been forged.
Exhibit C: Forensic document examiner, Yossi Vissoker, says the signature on the court order is not by the hand of Ms Chetty and, after comparing it to her actual signature, adds: “the dissimilarities are shocking.” After examining several other court orders supposedly signed by Ms Chetty, he goes on: “The need to forge Ms Chetty’s signature wasn’t a once off occasion, but an ongoing occurrence in the court. The purpose of which is unknown to me.”
This in itself should set the entire Durban court system alight. Of course, it may be that other people in the office are signing on behalf of the registrar, but forging Ms Chetty’s signature?
It begs the question: how many liquidation orders with forged signatures have been issued by rogue elements operating out of the Durban court?
But wait, there’s more.
Exhibit D: An affidavit by Lt Mbhele, the Hawks’ investigating officer, states: “When the liquidation was eventually heard at the high court, it is clear that most of the documents have been created. The signatures on important documents are fraudulent and I base this on the statements of the responsible officials.”
The court officials interviewed by the Hawks found the documents riddled with flaws, while there is no record of the hearing ever having taken place.
There is no dispute that the lawyers actually turned up at court on the day of the provisional liquidation. Leonard Katz and Justine Hoppe of ENS were the appointed attorneys for Nedcor, with counsel Brendan Manca SC and Juliette Nicolson assigned the task of arguing the bank’s case in court. Brakspear’s attorney Fiona Scott and his appointed counsel Sydney Alberts also showed up.
What happened next is something of a mystery. Brakspear says he opposed the winding up order from the outset, and instructed his lawyers accordingly. If this is the case, his lawyers defied his instructions and sold him down the river. In an affidavit drafted last year, Brakspear’s then attorney Fiona Scott says she phoned her client from the court on 23 December 2008 to keep him apprised of developments and that “despite us opposing the merits, it would be to the advantage of West Dunes Properties to consent to the Order being taken….” This would mean the farm would no longer go on auction for R18 million, but could be sold to the Rupert-controlled company Applemint Properties 9 for a much fatter R25,2 million. Brakspear, after being briefed along these lines, consented to the order being granted, according to Scott.
No so fast, says Brakspear. “I always opposed the liquidation. I would never consent to a provisional liquidation that was based on fraud.”
But it was too late. Judge Balton granted the provisional liquidation order…or so it seemed.
Exhibit E: Does Judge Balton remember the case perchance? Apparently not. In a letter to Brakspear deputy Judge President Jappie says he spoke to Judge Balton and the registrar for Judge Gorven (who gave the final liquidation order) and neither recall hearing the matter.
I asked Katz about the accusation of the forged signatures on the court order, as alleged in the Hawks investigation: “It’s complete crap, man. Have you read the affidavit? It’s totally fucking illiterate."
Katz further says it is not his responsibility to attend to court administrative issues. “If there’s something funny going on in the registrar’s office how can it be my fault?”
And: “There’s only one thing more delusional than Brakspear and that’s…Lt Mbhele’s letter, it is beyond belief.”
I put it to him that his paper trail in this case was not clean. “My paper trail is completely clean,” he fired back.
The Hawks investigators twice held meetings with Nedbank and Nico Theo Botha, the employee who deposed on behalf of the bank. Botha was represented by his lawyers at these meetings, according to the Hawks.
“I have found out that there is no copy of the request by West Dunes for a R7 million loan from Westley Trust in June 2008,” according to a statement from Lt Mbhele of the Hawks.
“There is no copy of proof of R7 million payment by Westley Trust Jersey to RMB in or about June 2008.
“There is no copy of receipt of R7 million by RMB in or about 2008.”
Further, the Hawks found no evidence that the Westley Trust had R7 million in the first place to lend to West Dunes, and – damningly – “there is no evidence that Nico Theo Botha was the chairman of BOE, no evidence that Nico Theo Botha had personal knowledge and could swear positively to the facts contained in the affidavit (presented in the liquidation hearings)."
What will an attentive judge make of all these facts? Brakspear attempted to have his case heard late last year, but the judge said his papers were missing. Another strange twist to this tale. Brakspear says they were not missing. “They were sitting all correctly filed in the senior court registrar’s office. Someone had created a file - what the registrar called a ‘dummy file’ and placed that dummy file in front of the judge. They tell me it is an old trick to delay the matter from being decided on. The Court Registrar, a Mrs Bothma, has got both the dummy file and the original file under lock and key and the offices of the Minster of Justice and Chief Justice have been notifed of this irregularity. ”
In any event he has since taken on a new attorney to help him get the case heard in an open court. He also plans to take on Fairbairn Private Bank (acquired by Nedcor) in the UK courts. This, after all, is where his trouble all started.
We await with interest the court's deliberations on this rather fascinating case. Either Brakspear is delusional as the opposing attorney says, or has the bank attempted – as Brakspear alleges – to pervert the course of justice?
Watch this space….