CapeTown - There are two criminal trials under way which deal with allegations of people being deprived of retirement fund benefits – that of J Arthur Brown of Fidentia in the Cape High Court and that of Simon Nash, executive chairman of appliance company Cadac.
Over the past year the Brown and Nash camps have loosely joined forces in a smear campaign aimed mainly at the respective curators of companies and retirement benefits that had been under their control and the Financial Services Board (FSB).
Nash faces charges of fraud, theft and contravening the Prevention of Organised Crime Act arising from the alleged fraudulent stripping of retirement fund surpluses from the Sable and Cullinan/Powerpack retirement funds.
Another fund over which he had control, the Cadac Pension fund, is also under curatorship.
Central to the Brown case has been the R1.3 billion held on behalf of widows and orphans of mainly deceased members of the Mineworkers Provident Fund.
Brown has said the FSB was out to get him in order to protect established financial services companies from whom Fidentia was taking away business.
The Nash camp has been trying to make out that the appointment of the curatorships is simply a corrupt relationship between curators and the regulator to enrich individual curators and executives at the FSB.
The campaign has seen the use of printed comics and source-disguised websites.
Much of the support for this campaign has come from the investigative magazine Noseweek.
However, the campaign had a major setback earlier this year when Noseweek, after printing the Nash camp smears, was forced to publish one of the most abject withdrawals and apologies to curators ever seen in a South African publication.
Weekend Argus has e-mails between various parties which show the information published by Noseweek was provided by the Nash camp.
Noseweek also published Brown’s claims of being victimised by the FSB with unverified claims about parties associated in the initial Brown investigation.
Another common factor between the two camps has been controversial lawyer June Marks. She was initially the lawyer of the Cadac Pension Fund, which was placed under curatorship in January 2010.
Marks has also done a volte face a number of times since 2009 when the FSB started to investigate the fund. According to court documents she volunteered information about alleged fraud and the workings of the Cadac fund to the FSB, its inspectors and Tony Mostert, curator of the Sable and Cullinan/Powerpack retirement funds.
However, she secretly recorded the conversations of the FSB and Mostert and their legal teams using a recording device disguised as a pen.
She fell out with Mostert after a dispute over money.
She then switched sides and handed the Nash team her recordings, which Nash has since used in edited versions as part of the campaign to vilify
numerous parties, including the FSB and its senior executives, Mostert and his legal team, and people involved in his criminal prosecution.
Marks acted as Brown’s lawyer in his criminal trial while also issuing summonses to numerous parties, including the curators and the FSB, demanding the payment of thousands of millions of rand on behalf of Brown. But the relationship between Brown, Nash and Marks broke down and she has distanced herself from the smear campaign and said she was misled by Nash and Brown.