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Disgraced liquidator Enver Motala has made a stunning comeback to be appointed by a Deputy Master in Pretoria on several matters, more than a decade after he was first removed from a panel of eligible liquidators in 2011.
His removal was occasioned by his lying under oath about a fraud conviction in 1978, on more than 90 counts, when his name was still Enver Dawood, and for a failure to declare a conflict of interest related to his handling of the liquidation of Pamodzi, a mining group.
Massive losses
His return comes after a series of events that saw Motala lose a succession of court battles, the suspension of respected senior officials at the Masters Office, Christene Rossouw and Tessie Bezuidenhout and, more recently, the murder of Cloete Murray and his son, Thomas, on 18 March.
All of this was amid serious concerns raised by the media and the industry that the Pretoria Master’s Office was being captured by vested interests.
Motala does not appear on the list of approved liquidators published by the Department of Justice, and a process to have him reinstated has not yet taken place.
News24 understands that advocate Andries Ramorulana, who effected Motala’s appointment to one or more companies on 15 September, is now facing an investigation by the department.
Steve Mahlangu, a spokesperson for the department, confirmed the probe to News24. But he declined to respond to detailed questions seeking to establish the circumstances around Motala’s sudden appointment.
Important signatures
Ramorulana signed a certificate of appointment confirming Motala as a joint liquidator on SA Machado, a company that belongs to businessman Mario Rocha. Ramorulana’s certificate includes joint liquidators Puleng Bodibe and Pontsho Seriti, who have been on the matter since 2018. But Hannes Muller, who was also appointed to the SA Machado estate in 2018, was excluded.
Strangely, on Thursday, the Master issued an updated certificate of appointment, with what appears to be Ramorulana’s signature, amending the appointment again – for the second time in 13 days – to include Muller. The certificate now states that the change in liquidators was occasioned by the “demise” of Murray.
However, Murray was never appointed as the liquidator on SA Machado. He was involved in the liquidation of other companies belonging to Rocha.
In an email Ramorulana sent to Motala on 30 August, which News24 has seen, Motala is “cordially invited” to provide an endorsement – a letter setting out Motala’s eligibility – to be appointed to several companies in Rocha’s insolvent estate, including Rapiprop 149, Castle Crest Properties 54, Castle Crest Properties 40, 8 Mile Investments and SA Machado Construction, in order to “investigate the books, records and all serious allegations levelled [by Rocha] against the appointed liquidators in this matter”.
Murray was deeply involved in the winding up of all the companies due to the interlinked nature of transactions and was appointed on Rapiprop, while his colleagues – Conrad van Staden and Simon Jiyane – handled Rocha’s sequestration.
In June this year, the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria set aside a decision by Ramorulana to remove Murray from another estate, JAB Dried Fruit Products, concluding an application Murray had filed prior to his death.
Motala, through his attorney, Ian Lindsay, denied that the appointment was unlawful, but revealed that Motala had in fact, been appointed as joint liquidator on all the Rocha companies, not just SA Machado.
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Lindsay said Motala “will carry out his duties as a liquidator as required by the law and as instructed by the Master”.
Links to the Murray murders
Rocha has, in emails also seen by News24, signed his correspondence with the moniker “master slayer of liquidators” in the aftermath of the Murray murders – and, prior to that, “the slayer of corrupt colluding racketeering liquidators.”
He later clarified this to Carte Blanche, denying he had called himself that and inferring that the reference was to removing liquidators he believed were corrupt.
A sample of Rocha’s allegations against Murray, in particular, revealed little substance or evidence of any actual corrupt actions by any of the liquidators beyond allegations they had “unlawfully” sold assets owned by some of the companies, including apartments in Bedfordview.
Murray and the other joint liquidator’s actions in the Rocha companies have been upheld in various court judgments over the past four years – and, in February 2023, Rocha’s alleged harassment, defamation, and attempted intimidation grew serious enough that Murray and the other liquidators obtained an interdict to bar Rocha from continuing to make public allegations of racism, corruption, racketeering and collusion against them.
The order also compelled Rocha to cooperate with the liquidators and grant them access to Rocha’s apartment, which needed to be sold to recover funds to pay his debts.
Weeks later, Murray and his son, Thomas, were murdered as they drove on the N1 toward Pretoria after securing a property in Melrose Arch linked to another liquidation involving BIG Business Innovations Group and I2 Infinite Innovations, both companies owned by siblings Rushil and Nishani Singh.
Rocha did not directly respond to questions about his view on Motala’s appointment, instead repeating allegations first made by former Bosasa director Angelo Agrizzi that News24 had failed to investigate allegations against Murray, who had caused a R93 million claim to be filed against Agrizzi for money he and the other Bosasa liquidators believed was owed to the company and its creditors.
“Furthermore… you are well aware of the SIU report into the matter of the Masters’ office, surely you will agree they are better geared and equipped to attend to the investigation than either yourself or myself, and surely you should allow them to complete the investigation and take action before speculative reporting,” Rocha said.
The SIU report in question is yet to be made public.
Motala’s dubious return
Motala, News24 understands, is not eligible to be appointed to any insolvent estates as he is not on the panel of approved liquidators. He did not respond to direct questions seeking to establish whether or not he had been reinstated.
The justice department, Ramorulana, and acting Chief Master Penny Roberts – through Mahlangu – refused to respond to detailed questions seeking to establish whether Motala could have been appointed and what processes had been followed.
Intake of new or additional liquidators is a process that includes several steps and deliberation by a committee of officials in the Master’s office.
Part of the process that Motala would have had to follow to be reinstated would have included producing documents – a letter of good standing from a professional body, a tax clearance certificate, a criminal record check, and a security bond from a financial institution.
Motala did not respond to direct questions seeking to establish if he had obtained the relevant documents.
Motala had his criminal record expunged, but it appears he has received special treatment in being summarily appointed without going through the process to be reinstated properly, according to several sources in the insolvency industry.
Rossouw, who was suspended in 2021 after 33 years working for the Master’s Office, had driven the processes that investigated Motala’s conduct, starting in 2009 when media reports raised questions over the handling of the sale of several mines owned by the Pamodzi Group to a black economic empowerment company, called Aurora Empowerment Systems.
Aurora included former president Jacob Zuma’s nephew, Khulubuse Zuma, as well as Zuma’s longtime lawyer, Michael Hulley, among its directors. Another director was Zondwa Mandela, a grandson of former president Nelson Mandela.
Motala loaned Aurora R3 million at a time when the company was struggling to come up with the funds promised to buy Pamodzi’s assets. Aurora was later accused of asset stripping – in effect, selling off assets it did not fully own yet – to cover the costs of salaries at other mines.
Maltreatment
Rossouw instituted at least two official inquiries into allegations that mine workers were starving and had not been paid and was met with resistance from Motala, who refused to answer questions.
Then, it was revealed that Motala had apparently changed his surname from Dawood in what looked like an attempt to hide the fact that he had been convicted on more than 90 counts of credit card fraud in the 1970s. Any previous conviction for fraud or forgery automatically disqualifies a person from ever being appointed as a liquidator.
But Motala, when confronted by Rossouw with the allegations during an official process, and while Motala was under oath, prevaricated and did not fully answer questions.
All of the factors came to a head in 2011, and Rossouw, having removed Motala as a joint liquidator on the Pamodzi estate, removed him from the panel of liquidators entirely.
This sparked a series of court battles that reaffirmed Rossouw’s actions as correct and was scathing of Motala’s conduct.
In May 2019, the Supreme Court of Appeal found that Rossouw’s actions had not been unlawful and that she had, in fact, been obligated to act against Motala.
“Apart from that, there is the fact that the appellant had deliberately and persistently lied to Ms. Rossouw about his convictions. Alerted by the article in The Citizen newspaper, she was obviously concerned about whether the appellant was the person who had been convicted in 1978. The cause of such concern was obvious; if he was indeed the person who had been convicted, he was potentially disqualified to be a liquidator. However, as I have already detailed, instead of coming clean and telling the truth, the appellant was initially evasive and, subsequently, absolutely dishonest in regard to the issue,” a SCA judge found.
“This farce culminated in him falsely denying under oath that he knew a person by the name of Dawood or that he had been convicted of the offences in question under that name. The appellant’s later explanation that he had lied in the situation he found himself in when ‘ambushed’ by the Master at the inquiry on 17 August 2011, is untenable. It is quite clear from the correspondence which had preceded his giving evidence under oath at the inquiry that the possibility of him being the person who had been convicted, as alleged in the newspaper article, was of paramount concern to the Master and, indeed, the reason behind the inquiry being held,” the judgment reads.
The judgement stated:
It would have been a simple matter for the appellant to have then explained that it was he who had been convicted and the circumstances under which that conviction had taken place. All he had to do was explain that he had assumed guilt to protect his uncle from being arrested. Instead, he lied under oath, stating that he would have disclosed any previous convictions, and denying both that he had any such convictions and that he had any knowledge of a person known as Enver Mohamed Dawood.
Motala abandoned a R150 million damages claim he filed against the minister of justice and Rossouw, in her personal capacity, after the judgment was handed down.
In August 2019, the Constitutional Court denied Motala direct access to appeal the SCA ruling.
By 30 January 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa had signed a proclamation authorising a sweeping probe by the SIU into the affairs of the Master’s office, which had long been operating under a cloud of suspected corruption and maladministration.
The SIU investigation so far, despite more than 150 allegations of wrongdoing by officials in the Master’s offices across the country, has led only to the suspension of Bezuidenhout and Rossouw for allegations of misconduct in their appointment of Murray on the politically connected Bosasa matters – despite six others being named in a report that called for the suspensions.
They are both continuing to fight their suspensions.
