Pretoria - The man at the centre of the Fidentia scandal, company chief J Arthur W Brown, has broken his silence to defiantly proclaim his innocence.
He has vowed to fight back and accused the Financial Services Board (FSB) of ruining the company while claiming it is trying to save it.
Brown spoke out on Wednesday for the first time since the FSB had Fidentia Asset Management placed under curatorship on February 1.
Brown described the allegations against him as "lies".
In an interview with the Cape Argus, sister newspaper of the Pretoria News, he said the money alleged to be "missing" - between R400-million and R680-million - was "still there in those companies".
On the allegations that he stole money or used trust funds for private spending sprees, he said: "It's absolute hogwash.
"Neither me, the trustees or directors have benefited in any way that is unreasonable."
Brown said he had bought whatever assets he owned with his salary and dividend payouts.
Asked about his success, he explained: "I worked 18 hours a day. I saw an opportunity in South Africa to build technical systems, administration businesses.
"I learned very early on that the key lies in administration. You can build a very successful business.
"I invested in people, trained them to a high level of technical skill nobody in this country, and only a few companies in the world, can offer the range of business intelligence systems we can."
Ultimately, he said, the value in the various companies was in two forms. The first was the intellectual property of the systems he had created, the skills of the staff members who worked for him and their potential to offer world-class business administration services.
Second, in tangible assets like property, which ensured "capital preservation" of the funds in his care.
There have been allegations that he had invested in companies that were now worth less than their purchase price.
But he said: "There is not one investment that has not grown."
On reports that the Sante health spa in the Winelands was losing money, he claimed that Fidentia Asset Management had paid R88-million for the property and it was now worth R600-million.
He also said the Dockside property at Century City had been bought for R18-million and was now worth about R100-million.
He said all the company's investments had been within the trust deeds' strict legal requirements and that all money had been invested legally.
He said there would be three victims now that the FSB had taken over curatorship of the company.
"First, the orphans (whose interests are looked after by the Living Hands trust). We followed an investment strategy that we felt was best under the circumstances."
Furthermore, he claimed, the curators did not have the expertise to run the company as required.
Brown said he was concerned that in the time it would take the curators to get to understand the company, they would ruin it.
This could happen through the loss of highly-trained and irreplaceable staff. So the business was the second victim.
The third "victim" was the range of social and development projects - from sponsorships of choirs to rugby academies - that had been put on hold by the curators.
Brown has also been accused of squirrelling money offshore. "I do not own a single thing offshore," he claimed.
On the rumoured prospect of a visit by the Assets Forfeiture Unit, Brown said: "If they can find any assets that I didn't buy with my own money ... " before insisting that there were none.
He said no one from the police or Scorpions had been in touch with him.
- This article was originally published on page 1 of Pretoria Newson February 14, 2007