Two Gqe­berha stock­brokers accused of run­ning a mul­ti­mil­lion-rand Ponzi scheme have walked away free men after the Gqeberha Comm­mer­cial Crimes Court dis­missed all 163 counts against them, reports The Herald.

Nearly six years after their arrest, Help­ing Hand Invest dir­ect­ors Leon Lewit­ton and Michael Rath­bone, were acquit­ted without ever tak­ing the stand ... 

... and while the rul­ing brings to an end a mara­thon trial and months of testi­mony, a string of investors have been left out of pocket and with no crim­inal recourse. 

Some com­plain­ants told the court they had lost thou­sands of rand. One fam­ily reportedly lost more than R300 000, while Chris­ti­aan Engel­brecht pre­vi­ously said he had lost his life sav­ings of R1.1m.

The state faced myriad prob­lems in prov­ing its case, includ­ing ‘absent’ or ‘unknown’ investors, a jur­is­dic­tion issue with at least one of the com­plaints and the fact that the wit­nesses admit­ted to know­ing the com­pany was not registered with the then Fin­an­cial Ser­vices Board (FSB) at the time.

Defence attor­ney Alwyn Griebenow suc­cess­fully argued under sec­tion 174 of the Crim­inal Pro­ced­ure Act (CPA) that the state had failed to present a case strong enough to require a defence.

Lewit­ton and Rath­bone had pleaded not guilty to fraud, theft and con­tra­ven­tions of the Fin­an­cial Advis­ory and Inter­me­di­ary Ser­vice Act.

They were accused of defraud­ing more than 100 investors out of more than R22m between 2017 and 2019. 

Magis­trate Nolitha Bara, with the evid­ence placed before her – or lack thereof – had no option but to dis­miss the case against the two men.

Help­ing Hand Invest had its primary office in New­ton Park and branches else­where in the coun­try.

Full report in The Herald