Lawyers for the Cajee brothers, who ran a cryptocurrency investment platform from SA that regulators suspect of being a Ponzi scheme, said their mandate to assist them has been terminated, according to Fin24.

It notes a statement from the lawyers yesterday that came just two days after their first public defence of the brothers who have been accused of vanishing along with an estimated $3.6bn (R51bn) in bitcoin from their Africrypt investment platform.

‘Our mandate to assist the Cajee Brothers has been terminated,’ John Oosthuizen, a Johannesburg-based attorney, said in an e-mail.

The brothers have not been seen since they told their investors in April that the platform had been hacked.

Oosthuizen previously said that Raees and his elder brother Ameer Cajee, denied absconding with the funds.

They never notified the police about the hack, but said they would co-operate with future investigations, he said.

Full Fin24 report