Several people who invested with Fidentia have marched to a Cape Town law firm to demand answers about their money.
|||Cape Town - A group of people who invested with Fidentia marched to the offices of law firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr on Tuesday, demanding to know where their money was.
The group included members of a former mineworkers provident fund that had invested with the Living Hands Umbrella Trust and retrenched South African Nylon Spinners (Sans) workers who invested with Antheru. Antheru is one of the companies that invested with Fidentia.
Former Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown was initially charged with defrauding the company of about R40-million, but this count was withdrawn this year.
The group said on Tuesday their investments were managed by Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr. The firm has denied the claims.
Andrea Collocott, marketing head, said: “The suggestion that the firm might be in any way to blame for losses suffered by any person who invested with Fidentia is without merit. The funds of investors were at no time managed by Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr. Funds were at all times managed by the joint curators in their capacities as such. We have the greatest sympathy for people who have incurred losses at the hands of Fidentia.”
The firm was established after a merger. Dines Gihwala, former chairman of Hofmeyr Herbstein & Gihwala, broke away when he became one of the curators of Fidentia.
The investors, however, believe that Brown was not responsible for their loss. They say they were paid every month for two years before the company was placed under curatorship in 2007.
Woodrow Christian, 67, of Northpine, said he and 63 other Sans workers had invested R11-million with Antheru. He and Rachel Fortuin, 59, of Blackheath, had invested R500 000 and R150 000 respectively and received monthly returns when Brown was in charge of Fidentia.
Christian said: “Mr Brown did not do anything wrong… The curators had six years to prove the case against him, but they couldn’t.”
Brown, 43, was arrested in 2007 and initially faced more than 190 charges, but the prosecution in April accepted his guilty plea on two statutory fraud counts. In May, Western Cape High Court Judge Anton Veldhuizen fined Brown R150 000 (three years), with a further three years suspended for four years.
The National Prosecuting Authority has been granted leave to appeal against the sentence imposed on Brown. A date for the appeal hearing has not yet been set.
Cape Argus