Property magnate Nic Georgiou will have to repay a former Pickvest investor more than R10m in capital and interest after the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) dismissed an application to have a previous default judgment against Georgiou rescinded, says a Moneyweb report.

It notes this will open the door for thousands of other investors in the Highveld Syndications (HS) 21 and 22 companies to institute similar claims against Georgiou to repay their former Pickvest investments in terms of the buyback agreements. The investor, Suraiya Noormahomed, invested R3m in HS 22 in 2009.

She signed an agreement which stated that Georgiou or one of his related entities would repurchase the shares she received five years later in 2014 for R6m. Following the collapse of the HS schemes and Georgiou’s failure to buy back the shares in terms of the buyback agreement, Noormahomed launched a High Court application to force Georgiou to do so.

In July last year the court granted a default judgment against Georgiou and entities related to him to repay the R6m, as well as interest at 15.5% on this amount since August 2014.

In total, this amounts to more than R10m. Moneyweb notes this judgment follows Georgiou's withdrawal of an SCA appeal against two scathing High Court judgments last week. The two judgments found that Georgiou acted unethically, tried to sabotage the investors’ rights and abused the court system. Georgiou’s legal team withdrew the appeal after the judges were highly critical during legal arguments, and tendered punitive costs.

Full Moneyweb report