An uncut gemstone and a "suspicious" payment from a trust fund to an official are central to the Fidentia saga.
|||Cape Town - An uncut gemstone and a “suspicious” payment from a trust fund to a Saudi Arabian embassy official. These form two central aspects of the Fidentia saga – the disposal of assets to free up money and money that has been lost.
Fidentia was headed by Arthur Brown, who last month was sentenced to a R150 000 fine or three years in jail for two fraud convictions, as well as a further three years suspended for four years.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has applied for leave to appeal against the “lenient” sentence.
When Fidentia was placed under curatorship in 2007, four trusts lost more than R1.3 billion in investments.
To try to recover this money Fidentia’s curators had been selling off assets. Some of this money was distributed to the funds’ trustees, who then paid it to the beneficiaries.
A Fidentia curators’ report to the Western Cape High Court dated January 29 said an uncut tanzanite gemstone was one of the assets they had yet to dispose of. A November 2010 curators’ report said Graham Maddock’s wife had returned the gemstone to the curators.
Maddock was a former Fidentia accountant and the November report said Brown had given Maddock’s wife the stone.
“She felt that this gemstone was acquired with ill-gotten gains and did not wish to retain it. This gemstone will be disposed of… in a manner that will realise maximum value,” the 2010 curators’ report said. It was worth about R20 000.
In its application to appeal against Brown’s sentence, the NPA said R8 million had been paid from trust funds “under suspicious circumstances” to a Saudi Arabian embassy official.
The 2011 report said then-ambassador Dr SM Zedan had “accepted personal responsibility” for the amount and would make an offer regarding payment. He had not done so and his whereabouts were not known.
caryn.dolley@inl.co.za
Cape Times