Dr Munsamy, I Presume ...

He’s been called ‘A crook and a fraudster. An animal and a disgusting waste of skin and bones’.

- Mandy Wiener

IN JULY LAST YEAR, NOTORIOUS CZECH fugitive and gangster Radovan Krejcir stood in the dock in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court in connection with a money-laundering scam that defrauded the Central Bank of Swaziland of R7.6 million. Next to him stood his three co-accused – a prominent Gauteng businessman, Nico Oosthuizen, a relatively innocuous individual called Keith Bain and a Dr Mahendran Munsamy. (See box.)

There have been several postponements since, and their next court appearance was scheduled to take place shortly after Noseweek went to press.

The world knows about Krejcir – but where had we heard of Dr Munsamy before? A bit of research revealed that the wealthy, suave medical doctor with a portfolio of lavish properties, from Hyde Park to Sandhurst, Johannesburg, has previously featured in a variety of elaborate, convoluted and allegedly criminal schemes involving South African banks and petroleum companies, a corrupted bank manager and the criminal underworld.

Of particular interest was the extraordinary evidence we found contained in case file number 2014/27890, at the Gauteng Local Division of the High Court. It contains the record of an application brought by South African Petroleum and Energy Guild (Sapeg) – a company controlled by Mahendran Munsamy – against RMB Private Bank (a division of FirstRand Bank Ltd) in August 2014. The bank had frozen his accounts because they had come to the conclusion that he was using them for money laundering other unlawful purposes. (He also happened to owe the bank a couple of hundred million on some fraudulently obtained bank guarantees.

Munsamy denied the accusation and applied to court to order the bank to release his funds.

Remarkably, considering the nature and extent of the evidence presented and the issue of law raised in it, the case appears to have escaped media attention until now.