Pretoria - South African swimming legend and former Olympic champion Cameron van der Burgh is embroiled in legal proceedings against his former girlfriend and her family regarding a financial transaction that went sour.
He said in papers before the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, that they owed him more than R343 000 following the sale in 2015 of his shares in a company called Consilia Investments.
He entered into an agreement with Johan Botes, the father of his former girlfriend, Jana Botes, as well as with her and her brother Jakobus Botes and two other people.
Van der Burgh said the share price payable to him was R860 000, but the Botes family failed to pay him as agreed.
He turned to court in 2017 for a financial judgment against them. They subsequently offered to pay him R659 447 and he accepted the offer as part of a settlement agreement in that case. He said he then received payments made in “dribs and drabs”, but they still owed him R343 311.
As they had not fulfilled the 2017 agreement, which was made an order of court, he obtained a writ of execution against the movable and immovable assets of Johan Botes.
The sheriff of the court told Van der Burgh that Johan Botes said he had no money to satisfy the writ of execution against his property. The sheriff further indicated that he could not find sufficient disposable property to settle the outstanding amount.
Van der Burgh’s attorneys then lodged an application with the court to have Johan Botes’s Menlo Park home sold in execution, so that Van der Burgh could receive the money.
This application is due to be heard by the court on August 22.
But Van der Burgh, who now lives in London, returned to court on an urgent basis, as he said he had heard that Johan Botes was in the process of selling his Menlo Park home and transferring the property to a buyer.
Van der Burgh’s lawyer, Ndaedzo Khwidzhili, told the court that Johan Botes also no longer lived in South Africa. He had no assets in the country and if he sold his home and channelled the money abroad, Van der Burgh wouldn’t be able to obtain the outstanding money.
The court was told that the swimming champion’s only chance of recovering the debt was by selling the Menlo Park property on auction. “The property is his (Johan Botes’s) only remaining asset in South Africa,” the lawyer said.
A letter had been sent to Johan Botes warning him not to sell the property, but he had not responded.
The court, meanwhile, interdicted Johan Botes from going ahead with the property transaction or transferring the house into a buyer’s name, pending the finalisation of the execution application in August.
Pretoria News