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Africrypt founders Raees and Ameer Cajee are being hunted by one of their major investors, Juan Meyer, a colourful character determined to track them down.
Meyer also said one of the brothers was hiding in Dubai, while the other remains in Switzerland with his passport confiscated.
“I am working with Interpol, and Dubai and Swiss authorities to have the other brother hiding in Dubai arrested and have both brothers repatriated back to South Africa to face criminal charges,” Meyer told MyBroadband.
Meyer is the CEO of Aurum Wealth and chairman of Umvuzo Lifestyle Creators. Aurum was one of Africrypt’s biggest clients, with Meyer saying he had invested the equivalent of R177 million with the brothers.
Meyer was also a former business associate of notorious mobster Rodovan Krejčíř. He turned on the organised crime boss after he was arrested while transporting R20 million in gold — allegedly for Krejčíř.
Krejčíř has been sentenced to almost 16 years of jail time for fraud in the Czech Republic, his home country, and 35 years in South Africa, where he was found guilty of attempted murder, assault, and kidnapping, among other things.
In a 10-page affidavit signed in 2010, Meyer alleged that Krejčíř had set him up. He also implicated Krejčíř in criminal dealings, including the bribery of the head of Gauteng crime intelligence. Krejčíř denied the allegations.
However, Meyer’s affidavit reportedly landed him on Krejčíř’s hit list.
Fast forward fifteen years, and Meyer told MyBroadband that he had the equivalent of R177 million invested with Africrypt before it collapsed in 2021.
Africrypt was a Ponzi scheme operated by Raees and Ameer Cajee since 2019. It collapsed in April 2021, with a notice signed by Ameer claiming the platform had been hacked and their funds lost.
The scheme attracted investors by promising outsized returns, which the brothers said was possible thanks to revolutionary artificial intelligence cryptocurrency trading software Raees had developed.
An investment presentation from around September 2020 claimed that the scheme achieved returns as high as 13% per month.
The Cajee brothers were catapulted to international infamy when Bloomberg reported that the brothers had gone missing along with $3.6 billion (R54 billion) in crypto assets.
However, this initial estimate of the amount stolen turned out to be completely inaccurate.
The inexperienced crypto sleuth who was hired to investigate the scam by victims’ lawyers had traced the Bitcoin deposits made into Africrypt’s account to a wallet address that had received 69,000 bitcoins.
This was worth $3.6 billion (R54 billion) at the time, leading to dramatic headlines.
It turned out that the wallet address the sleuth believed was Africrypt’s actually belonged to Luno, one of South Africa’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
It is unknown how much money the Cajees got away with, although Raees told the Wall Street Journal that less than $5 million (R75 million at the time) was lost when their platform was hacked.
Then, in mid-November 2021, an anonymous investor offered victims a $5 million deal in exchange for dropping the criminal charges against the brothers.
This was around the same time one of the brothers was arrested in Zurich — just months after they fled South Africa.
Meyer told MyBroadband that he did not accept this first deal from the “anonymous investor” that included dropping criminal charges.
“My lawyer filed the papers to liquidate Africrypt,” Meyer stated.
“The so-called mystery investor required everyone accepting a settlement agreement of 61 cents in the rand to sign a full and final agreement, plus a condition that once settlement has been received, no one will introduce criminal charges against the Cajees brothers.”
Meyer said he refused to sign this agreement.
“I had nine accounts on the Africrypt portal,” he said. “I instructed my lawyer to proceed with the liquidation which he did. He obtained a provisional liquidation order.”
Then the mystery investor made an offer to repay Meyer 63 cents in the rand on one of his 9 accounts which contained some of his personal money.
“We accepted this partial payment,” Meyer said. “The capital still due to me and Aurum by AfriCrypt is around R100million.”
Meyer said he had R82 million from my personal funds and R40 million in client funds invested at Africrypt.
“Against a futures contract against the launch of the so-called AfriCoin, I had a further $3 million (now worth R55 million) of personal funds placed,” he said.
In prison
While much of the Africrypt drama was unfolding, Meyer himself was in jail. According to Rapport, he was serving a three-year sentence for theft and illegally trading in gold.
This has led to allegations that he was operating Aurum as a Ponzi scheme from prison, with Devi Sankaree Govender recently featuring Meyer in one of her investigations. Meyer denies the allegations.
“At the time of my incarceration, Aurum was in business rescue under the control of the court-appointed business rescue practitioner (BRP),” he said.
“I am in the process to charge the BRP and the liquidator of Aurum for fraud and theft of R4.2 million that disappeared from the company accounts under their control,” said Meyer.
“One of my personal investments linked with Aurum while under the control of the BRP and the liquidator to the value €78 million also disappeared,” he said.
“I am meeting next week with the Hawks and SIU to proceed with criminal charges re the missing €78million.”
source:Big development in Bitcoin Brothers case in South Africa – MyBroadband
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