Chris van Gass

Cape Correspondent

CAPE TOWN - The " lavishly decorated" three-storey heaquarters of the Fidentia group and adjacent property belonging to the group in the Century City were auctioned yesterday for R40 million, but the curators of the company were "very happy" with the proceeds and said they had expected closet to R60 million.

Curators Dines Gihwala and George Papadakis said they would have to consider the offers and discuss them with the Financial Services Board (FSB) which was instrumental in placing Fidentia under curatorship in March last year, after initial investigations showed that up to R1,6bn of investors’ money was unaccounted for.

Waterford Place, the Fidentia headquarters, “lavishly decorated with brass fittings and balustrades covering three levels of ornate office space which leaves little to the imagination”, was sold to an unnamed Cape Town property developer for R34,5m.

The second property, Sycodeli, which housed the Fidentia canteen, was sold for R2,9m to a consortium of three bidders who also did not want to be named. Including commission the total price for both properties came to R40m.

Papadakis said Fidentia had spent “a lot of money, tens of millions or rand” on decorations and finishes. Gihwala said if the offers were rejected the curators had “one or two other plans” which he did not want to divulge.

He said the person who made the final bid had shown “some courage” to buy the property and “we would like to negotiate with that person first and see where we can take it to”.

Papadakis said yesterday the curators were still awaiting one claim from the Living Hands Umbrella Trust, and once this was received a plan of distribution could be drawn up. He said claims against Fidentia already amounted to about R1,2bn, and 80% of these claims were from the Living Hands Trust, which invested the money of widows and orphans.

Papadakis said the reason it had taken so long to process the claims was because the trust consisted of “several hundred source pension funds” and the trustee had to work through each source fund to establish figures to be consolidated into a single claim.

During the bidding yesterday Gihwala called on bidders to “consider the widows and orphans”.

He said later those most affected by the Fidentia scandal in which money was lost were widows and orphans “and if people are magnanimous and are willing to pay a little more, they are in essence making a contribution to widows and orphans who are suffering at the moment”.

Replying to criticism from J Arthur Brown that the curators had not approached him to assist in unravelling the claims, Gihwala said Brown “seems to have a monopoly on the truth”.

Papadakis said he had one meeting with Brown, 18 months ago, and was still awaiting the information he promised then.

Source: Business Day