Barely a week after a mystery ‘white knight’ offered creditors $4m (R64m) to bail out investors in the failed Africrypt scheme, another mystery investor has appeared with a better offer of $5m (R80m), equivalent to 65 cents in the rand.

The first offer made in November was also for $5m, though only $4m of that would go to creditors, with the remaining $1m (R16.13m) going to the running of the company.

This latest offer has a timeline of seven days for acceptance, after which the ‘white knight’ will purchase and take cession of the claims, reports Moneyweb.

Africrypt collapsed in April after its accounts were supposedly hacked and emptied of all funds. But it turns out this was not the first hack to have plagued the founders of Africrypt – brothers Raees and Ameer Cajee – and their investors.

The latest offer of 65 cents in the rand is on investors’ deposited amount, not the current value of the ‘hacked’ bitcoin or Ethereum.

Investors who deposited into Africrypt in September 2019 would have paid about R120 000 for their bitcoin – today worth about R800 000.

Africrypt was run by the Johannesburg-based Cajee brothers, who solicited funds from investors by promising returns as high as 10% a day using a computerised trading algorithm.

The Cajees disappeared around the time of the alleged hack, and are believed to be in the Middle East.

The first offer to buy out the claims of Africrypt investors made in November came with a catch: anyone accepting the offer would have to withdraw criminal charges against the Cajee brothers and their affiliated entities.

The second rescue offer presented to investors on 3 December carries no obligation to withdraw criminal charges.

Full Moneyweb report