Attorneys And Liquidator Become The … Ham In The Shamwich

Liquidated pig farm lands those involved in the swill after undervaluation

In a botChed “strategIC” PIg farM liquidation, a Pietermaritzburg liquidator, Africa’s largest law firm ENSafrica and sundry bottom feeders have been found not only to have effectively expropriated land without compensation from the rightful owner, but – in their haste to cover their tracks – they were also found to have invented a “tacit lease” agreement with the land owner in terms of which, so they claimed, their mere presence on the farm substituted for any rent they might have been obliged to pay.

All this is revealed in a preliminary report commissioned by the Pretoria High Court Master’s Office, filed in September.

Section 381 (3) of the Companies Act empowers the Master to “appoint a person to investigate the books and vouchers of a liquidator” if there is “reason to believe that a liquidator is not faithfully performing his [their] duties and duly observing all the requirements imposed on him [them]”.

The investigator, Pretoria-based Theo van den Heever of D&T Trust has found that Pietermaritzburg liquidator Pierre Berrangé with the help of ENSafrica insolvency attorney Adam Lombard (department head: Lennie “the Liquidator” Katz), commandeered and then leased out the Vryheid pig farm in question for over four-and-a-half years, rent free, and must now cough up anywhere between R2.1m and R14m in rent, with immediate effect. The discrepancy in estimates of the outstanding amount relates to just how much the land is valued at – now estimated at multiples of what the liquidators and their valuators had suggested it might realise on a forced sale.

And the investigator promises even more findings are on the way.