Pam Golding has been named in a Maputo City Court judgment from 2022 that found the real estate agency accepted payments of more than R20m into its bank account for former Mozambican President Armando Guebuza’s son, Ndambi.

A SA law firm, Jouberts Attorneys, was also named in the judgment for accepting millions for the younger Ndambi Guebuza.

The Daily Maverick reports that these payments were bribes that were paid to Guebuza by an Abu Dhabi-based shipbuilding company, the Privinvest Group. With the help of Pam Golding and SA lawyers, Guebuza splurged millions on property and luxury cars during a corruption scandal that collapsed the Mozambican economy.

The judgment found that Guebuza used Pam Golding and Jouberts Attorneys to evade the Mozambican financial system, where his transactions may have been flagged under anti-money laundering laws. 

Instead, Guebuza was able to route the bribes to their SA bank accounts.

‘In fact, in order not to attract attention in the Mozambican financial system… the defendant Armando Ndambi Guebuza hired those SA companies to receive the bribes, acquire assets abroad, and manage them,’ the judgment noted.

According to the judgment, Pam Golding, through its subsidiary, Apple Creek, facilitated payments on Guebuza’s behalf to luxury car dealerships, to purchase properties and to pay for interior design services.

At the time, the Estate Agency Affairs Act required money in an estate agent trust account to only be used for business related to property transactions, raising red flags over Pam Golding’s involvement in some of the payments it facilitated for Guebuza from its trust account. 

DM notes that the most startling revelation about these payments is that neither Guebuza nor Privinvest laundered the funds by transferring the money through shell companies or other entities to hide their source.

Instead, Privinvest paid the money directly into Pam Golding and Jouberts Attorneys’ SA bank accounts.

Using information in the Maputo judgment, Open Secrets calculated that Pam Golding and Jouberts Attorneys collectively received R110.9m on Guebuza’s behalf.

The Maputo judgment found that the payments had amounted to more than R95m, but Open Secrets found that the judgment had under-calculated the total figure based on the payment information included in the judgment. 

DM notes that the version of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act in force at the time placed a legal obligation on estate agents to identify a client’s source of funds, and to report any suspicious or unusual transactions.

Pam Golding has denied any wrongdoing in a right of reply to Open Secrets and said that an independent investigation by the Estate Agency Affairs Board in 2020 found that it had ‘complied with all relevant legislative and regulatory requirements’ at the time the transactions took place. 

In July 2025, Open Secrets referred Pam Golding and Jouberts Attorneys to the Hawks in a criminal complaint for further investigation against the two entities for potential money laundering offences.

The complaint was based on information in an investigative report Open Secrets released in 2024, titled For Sale: SA’s Property Laundromat and the Maputo City Court judgment.

Full Daily Maverick report