Legal Articles and Guides

The financial affairs of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) took centre stage at the KZN High Court (Durban) on Friday during a matter involving the ANCYL and the civic organisation, Active Citizens Movement (ACM), says a Sunday Tribune report. The ACM brought an application in April last year to prevent the Youth League from disrupting a memorial service it had organised for ANC stalwart Ahmed Kathrada. Despite an order being in place, the memorial descended into chaos with speakers being booed.

Steinhoff International Holdings NV’s former CEO Markus Jooste advised friends to sell the retailer’s shares days before the stock collapsed, according to a mobile phone text message reportedly seen by Bloomberg. The message, sent on or about 30 November 2017 to at least two people, told recipients there was unspecified bad news coming, notes the Bloomberg report in Business Day.

In November 2016, the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) rejected an application from the SA Property Owners’ Association to amend the Companies Act to give landlords preference over other creditors in business rescue proceedings. Now, says a Financial Mail report, the first substantial amendments to the Companies Act since it was implemented in 2011 – released for comment at the end of September – include a proposal that would give landlords the very rights that were strongly rejected by the High Court.

Swiss-based company Charles King SA’s sole director Amin Al-Zarooni has launched an urgent application in the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) to stop business rescue practitioners from selling Gupta-owned Optimum and Koornfontein mines. He also wants to stop them from selling any of Tegeta’s assets, notes a Fin24 report.

The two VBS executives who opposed having their estates liquidated by the curator of the bank lack credibility and are nothing more than liars and thieves, Judge Moroa Tsoka has found, according to a Business Day report. ‘It appears their actions were motivated by nothing else but greed. In their opinion, enough was never enough,’ concluded Tsoka, who presided over the application brought by VBS Bank curator Anoosh Rooplal to have the estates of the bank’s CEO, Andile Ramavhunga, and one-time COO, Robert Madzonga, sequestrated.

Business rescue practitioners appointed to save a Gupta business have filed an application for the liquidation of the Gupta's flagship company, Oakbay Investments, as a result of its failure to pay rent to another Gupta-owned company, Tegeta. A News24 report notes that in papers filed in the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) yesterday, Kurt Knoop, one of the business rescue practitioners, states Oakbay Investments owes Tegeta Resources and Energy more than R2m for the rental of its Sandton offices.

A business rescue plan announced this week gives 66-year-old construction company Basil Read a final chance to secure its survival, notes a Business Day report. Basil Read entered a business rescue process in June, so that rescue practitioner Adamantem and Matuson & Associates could develop a plan which would keep the construction company afloat while ensuring that its creditors would be better rewarded than if Basil Read was liquidated.

Prominent Eastern Cape attorney Dumisani Tabata’s R500 000 defamation lawsuit against Johannesburg lawyer Themba Langa may have become at least financially academic after Langa was recently sequestrated. But, notes a Daily Dispatch report, although Langa may now not be in a position to cough up money if the Eastern Cape High Court (Grahamstown) finds against him, Tabata will pursue the matter.

Practitioners trying to save the eight Gupta-owned companies placed under business rescue in February have had to face down 42 court cases in less than four months, says a Moneyweb report. The blizzard of litigation kicked off within days of business rescue practitioners being appointed in February.

The VBS Mutual Bank scandal has widened after controversial and politically-connected Angolan banker and millionaire Álvaro Sobrinho lost his R144m investment in the bank, according to City Press. The deal with Sobrinho – a business partner of former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos’ daughter, and who owns a bank and a football club in Portugal – was allegedly brokered by ANC Limpopo provincial treasurer Danny Msiza and young businessperson Kabelo Matsepe.

Derek Cohen, receiver of the Orthotouch investment scheme, has resigned, citing among other reasons a ‘potential risk’ to himself and his family due to campaigns waged by ‘certain investor’ groups, says a Moneyweb report. It notes this step may have far-reaching implications for the 18 000 Orthotouch investors and will blur the current uncertain situation related to interest payments to investors and the various legal challenges against property magnate Nic Georgiou and Orthotouch even further.

VBS Mutual Bank's executives carried out the country's ‘biggest bank robbery’ – and did so in designer suits – an advocate has claimed in the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg). Michael Antonie SC, representing the curator in the VBS matter, made the claim during applications to have executives of the mutual bank provisionally sequestrated, notes a Fin24 report.

A probe into a lawyer who was not a lawyer faces the daunting task, says a Times Select report. Evidence against the man known by three names (Patel Muhamed, Mohamed Ismail and Muhamed Ismail Patel) shows he allegedly defrauded Absa of about R17m, faked his legal qualification, and is said to have bribed staff at the office of the Master of the High Court to steal files.

Levies are the lifeblood of a sectional title scheme, and the Body Corporate has a duty to recover arrears from defaulting owners. It has the power, in addition to following standard debt collection procedures and perhaps approaching the Community Schemes Ombud for assistance, to apply for the sequestration of the owner’s estate. Indeed just the threat of a sequestration application is sometimes enough to frighten a recalcitrant debtor into paying up.

The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) has granted an order for the provisional liquidation of the company that owns The New Age newspaper, rebranded recently as Afro Voice. This, notes TimesLIVE, after Mzwanele Manyi and his company‚ Afrotone Media Holdings‚ launched an application last week arguing the the company was not commercially viable. Manyi bought the company from the controversial Gupta family last year.