Legal Articles and Guides

Group Five shareholders, who are likely to walk away empty-handed after the collapse of the construction firm, are considering suing directors for allegedly misleading them about the circumstances leading to its collapse.

The criminal trial of alleged Ponzi scheme masterminds Yunus Moolla and his wife Fathima Carawan finally got under way yesterday when both pleaded not guilty to more than 11 000 charges – including fraud and money-laundering – involving more than R1bn they allegedly fleeced from investors.

Multi-billionaire businessman Martin Levick’s court battle to hang on to plush properties, flashy cars and artworks has failed, with the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) ordering that he be sequestrated.

When a company goes into business rescue, creditors are often in for a beating. So as a creditor, if you had the foresight to cover your position upfront with personal suretyships from individuals with assets (normally the directors of the debtor company), you will no doubt be keen to recoup your losses by calling in those suretyships asap.

The provincial government will not allow the Magwa and Majola Tea estates to be liquidated, says acting head of the Rural Development & Agrarian Reform Department Zoleka Makina. Makina said the government had sunk R116m into the business rescue process of the two projects in the past three years and had no intention of throwing in the towel now, notes a Daily Dispatch report.

The SCA has upheld the removal of controversial liquidator Enver Motala, formerly known as Enver Dawood, from the panel of liquidators from whom the Master of the High Court will make appointments, writes Carmel Rickard for Legalbrief. Motala was removed while acting as joint liquidator of troubled gold mining group Pamodzi.

Custom jewellery worth more than R3m is the latest target of creditors who have lodged claims of R712m against the estate of business person Martin Levick, says a Sunday Times report.

Magwa and Majola tea estates – into which the government has ploughed R100m of taxpayers’ money over almost three years – faces provisional liquidation as the government has faltered at the final hurdle and withheld a final tranche of R48m.

Multibillionaire businessman Martin Levick, previously at the helm of Johannesburg-based Genesis Capital Group of companies, is accused of pocketing hundreds of millions of rands from people in Israel, London and Australia.

The protracted case in which SARS seeks to recover R388m from businessman Mark Lifman took another turn in the High Court on Tuesday when a third party sought to intervene in the case.

A construction outfit involved in prominent KZN businessman Vivian Reddy’s R4.3bn development in Umhlanga is suing the businessman for about R35m, according to the Sunday Times. A joint venture between WBHO and Sibonele Africa filed papers in the KZN High Court (Pietermaritzburg) demanding that Reddy pay R34.4m plus interest in terms of a personal surety he signed late last year.

Johannes ‘John’ Walker – the lawyer who represented the Pamodzi liquidators in the multimillion-rand transaction – was not authorised to act as their legal representative, according to Business Report. It says Walker – close friends with embattled Deputy Master of the High Court Christene Rossouw – was not registered with the Law Society at the time of the transaction.

Another massive sale of assets belonging to Gupta-owned Shiva Uranium is on the cards as the battle between the company’s current and former business rescue practitioners heads to the SCA, says a report on the IoL site.

SARS is seeking R388m in taxes owed by businessman Mark Lifman and has asked the High Court to put all his business entities under liquidation in an attempt to recoup the money.

The provisional liquidator of the VBS Mutual Bank has approached the courts to recover R2.7m loaned by the bank to cash-strapped businessperson, Brian Shivambu, younger brother of EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu. A Mail & Guardian report notes the funds are part of a R4m loan facility controversially granted to Shivambu’s company Sgameka Projects by the bank in late 2017.