By Rob Rose

There’s blood on the snow at South Africa’s only ski resort, Tiffendel, in the Eastern Cape.

An ugly spat has developed between the resort’s founders, the Van Eck family, and Greenlight Investments, which bought it two years ago.

The upshot is that while Tiffendel should be coining it with winter snow coating the nearby town of Barkley East, few guests are on the slopes of the resort, which is officially “in liquidation”.

“With this issue hovering above Tiffendel, it’s no wonder that people don’t want to pay money up front to come here,” says Ivan van Eck, one of the original owners.

In July 2007, the Van Eck family sold its shares in Tiffendel Ski to Greenlight, controlled by property developer Andre le Roux, for R22.6-million.

Greenlight got 51% of Tiffendel with half the money paid upfront, and the other R11-million due on transfer of the property.

At the time, the talk was of the resort’s “revival”.

Greenlight’s plan was to “split” the resort, selling the land to another company, Tiffski Property Investments (owned by another developer, David Taylor).

Tiffski would then “lease the land back” to Tiffendel, which would then “operate” the resort.

“But when we arrived, we uncovered a lot of irregularities in the company books,” alleges Le Roux.

“If we’d known this earlier, there is no way we would have done the deal”.

Van Eck, Tiffendel’s former chief executive, disputes this: “We had fully audited books.

"These charges were trumped up to detract attention from the fact that they didn’t pay the last R11-million instalment when they promised to.”

As tensions mounted, the Van Ecks tried to “cancel” the deal. A blistering battle erupted, with Le Roux’s new board of directors refusing to accept the “cancellation” and suspending Van Eck.

But the drama affected the actual ski business.

Unable to get enough cash to improve the outdated facilities and battling to pay creditors, Tiffendel tumbled into liquidation in February.

An insolvency inquiry into why Tiffendel collapsed is now taking place behind closed doors.

Le Roux told The Times that he had laid a criminal complaint against Van Eck after discovering “irregularities in the books of account of Tiffendel” after the purchase.

For example, he alleges that cash from sales of memberships were paid into an account called “Y. Fulton, trading as the Snowboard and Ski Shop”.

However, Fulton is Van Eck’s sister.

“I found that in two instances, Ivan bought Tiffendel shares in his own name, and the shares were paid for from the Snowboard account,” he says.

It is alleged that R74-million was channelled through the Snowboard account in 2006 and 2007 for transactions “which might be seen as fraudulent, or in contravention of the Companies Act”.

Le Roux says these transactions “conceal any true reflection of the state of affairs of Tiffendel”.

Van Eck denies this, saying the account was only opened by his sister, and it remained a company account throughout.

“These charges were trumped up to get me out of the company, so they could run it as they wished,” he says.

And Van Eck alleges he has discovered that R2.5-million was transferred into the account of Le Roux’s company, Prestige Procurement, six months before Tiffendel went into liquidation, which could also result in charges being laid with the police.

“It appears the company may have been trading recklessly for a year, which is forbidden under Section 424 of the Companies Act and makes directors personally liable,” he says.

Le Roux denies he benefitted, saying the cash “didn’t go into my personal account, but to buy two snow- making machines and a business”, which count among the assets of the liquidated company, Tiffendel.

“At that stage, we didn’t believe the company would be liquidated anyway,” he says.

Le Roux claims Van Eck is simply suffering from “seller’s remorse”.

“They ran a business which was hopelessly undercapitalised from the beginning.

"The board made bad decisions and the debts spiralled out of control, so when we came along they saw this as a chance to get out of the hole they were in.

"Now they want it back,” he says.

With accusations flying to and fro, it seems the liquidators are now debating whether to reverse the original R22.6-million sale of Tiffendel to Greenlight.

Liquidator Gavin Gainsford wouldn’t confirm whether this was the case, but said: “We’re looking at a legal opinion.

"We’re trying to get to the bottom of this.”

Meanwhile, just over the border in Lesotho, Afriski is profiting from the Tiffendel soap opera, which is losing revenue for both the shareholders and South Africa’s fiscus.

Source: The Times