By Karen Breytenbach
THE curators of the insolvent estate of former Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown and his wife, Susan, need the Australian courts' help to attach movable assets she allegedly took with her when she fled to Australia with their children.
An application was brought while the couple were only provisionally sequestrated to ask the Cape High Court to write to a court in Australia for help in recovering assets Mrs Brown is suspected of removing surreptitiously from two storage units at Airport Industria before leaving.
Their estate was finally sequestrated on November 5 and the application regarding possible assets in Australia was provisionally withdrawn before Acting Judge Jeremy Gauntlett on Friday.
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This was because the curators and the creditors are to meet on December 12 to discuss progress. Applications may be brought anew later.
Curator Sivalutchmee Mood-liar, a director of the insolvency practitioners Sanek Trust Services, said a letter of request to the Australian courts was necessary for winding up of the estate.
Moodliar and fellow curator Moegamat Mohamed, from May Field Capital, were seeking the authority to recover movable assets in Australia they believed belonged to the insolvent estate.
When the Fidentia Group collapsed, investigations revealed a shortfall of over R1 billion.
The investigators alleged Brown, as the "controlling mind of the group of companies", owed Fidentia about R24 million.
"The insolvents have continuously attempted to frustrate, at every angle, the sequestration process and the winding up of the insolvent estate," Moodliar said.
Moodliar said while Brown was imprisoned pending his criminal trial, his wife fled to Australia on a passport she had reported lost. An employee of Extra-Attic, a storage facility in Airport Industria, informed Moodliar items belonging to the Browns had been emptied without the facility's knowledge shortly before Susan Brown left.
According to an affidavit by an employee of Extra-Attic, the two units that were emptied were rented to Joseph Walter Arthur Brown. During May 2008, when Mrs Brown left the country, the units were inspected and were found to be empty. It was not known who cleared out the units.
Brown's attorney, Rashaad Khan, said he knew nothing of the application or its withdrawal, but he would bring various applications in the high court this week on behalf of Brown.
karen.breytenbach@inl.co.za
- This article was originally published on page 6 of Cape Times on November 24, 2008
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