A debt counsellor who was deregistered by the National Consumer Tribunal last month has appealed against the decision and will continue to service more than 4 000 over-indebted clients, to whom the National Credit Regulator (NCR) alleges he owes money.
Christopher Bornman, who is based in Bellville and is also a practising attorney, was deregistered after an NCR investigation found that he was charging his 4 808 clients a 10-percent collection commission before handing their debt repayments over to payment distribution agencies.
Jan Augustyn, the manager for investigations and enforcement at the NCR, says the NCR acted after receiving numerous complaints from consumers who were being harassed by credit providers and, in some cases, had lost their assets despite the fact that they were under debt review with Bornman.
“Bornman had two companies, Bornman and Associates Attorneys and Prosperitas Bene Carpe CC (PBC), which were using the NCR’s registration number for Bornman on their websites and, in doing so, were falsely providing services as registered debt counsellors,” Augustyn says.
The companies Bornman and Associates and PBC were ordered by the National Consumer Tribunal (NCT) to stop presenting themselves as debt counsellors and to stop offering debt counselling services.
Bornman was ordered to refund consumers’ debt counselling fees where it was found that he had not referred matters to court and to refund all his clients the 10-percent collection commission that he is alleged to have unlawfully levied. He was further ordered to surrender his consumer files to the NCR so that his cases could be handed over to other debt counsellors.
However, in light of Bornman’s appeal, all the NCT orders have been suspended pending the outcome of his appeal, including his deregistration, the handing over of consumer files to the NCR and the refunding of his clients.
Debt counsellors who have been deregistered since the National Credit Act (NCA) took effect in June 2007 are: Barry Kotze of Centurion and Sash Sahibdeen of Johannesburg, who were both deregistered in November last year; Zolile Njokweni of Cape Town, who was deregistered in November 2009; and Petrus Martinus Ferreira, who operated nationally and was deregistered in May last year.
Ralph Zulu of KwaZulu-Natal had his registration cancelled in September 2009, but the cancellation order was suspended until February this year.
If the NCR finds that Zulu has contravened the NCA during the year to February 2011, he will be deregistered.