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Photos: Louis Liebenberg’s liquidators ask: Declare him bankrupt
An urgent application has been submitted to the High Court in Pretoria to have diamond hawker Louis Liebenberg’s personal estate declared bankrupt and have him sequestered.
The application was filed this past week by the liquidators who had his company Tariomix placed under liquidation by the court.
If a provisional sequestration order is granted by a court, a trustee takes control of the insolvent person’s estate. Such a person may not incur any further obligations or debts or deal with his estate assets. Such a person may also not take out credit nor buy more assets or be allowed to operate a business.
The court documents ask Liebenberg to indicate before 2 July whether he will oppose the application and that the application be heard on 16 July or as soon as possible thereafter.
According to the liquidators of Liebenberg’s company, the purpose of the application is to show that he is insolvent and unable to pay his creditors.
In the more than 400-page court documents are photographs and video footage where Liebenberg appears to be gambling at a casino. It is claimed to have gambled away millions of rands from his so-called JV partners at casinos.
The liquidators say in their application Liebenberg misled thousands of people into investing in his scheme. They were reportedly lured into the scheme with promises of exorbitant profits and that the money would be used to buy diamonds and sell them at a profit.
When the investors inquire about their investments, they are told a whole bunch of stories as to why they are not paid out, according to court documents.
The liquidators say they have not been able to verify a single transaction of diamonds being bought or sold to date. According to them, there is no proof of any diamonds bought or sold by Tariomix. According to the liquidators’ investigation, it appears that the money was used by Liebenberg and one of his business partners, Ronell Kleynhans, for their personal benefit and to the detriment of the so-called JV partners who invested money in his scheme.
They argue that Liebenberg has a history with ponzi schemes. He reportedly ran a similar scheme in 2005 to 2006 under the name Wealth 4 U where he wanted to raise millions of rands to run his business with promises of huge returns.
However, nothing came of it. The company was liquidated, according to the liquidators’ statement to the court, true to the nature of ponzi schemes. Investors reportedly lost in the region of R293 million in the process. It is clear, according to the liquidators, that Tariomix is not Liebenberg’s first rodeo with ponzi schemes.
He reportedly uses fear of poverty combined with religion to attract investors. Once people have invested their money with him and inquire about their money when the promises fail to materialize, they are greeted with personal insults, threats and religious sermons.
According to the facts currently available, according to the liquidators, it seems that the entire business of Tariomix is an illegal scheme to defraud investors.
Liebenberg, according to the liquidators, is the puppet master who pulls the strings. He gives all the instructions on how the business should be conducted, the liquidators say in their affidavit to the court.
“The only way to get to the bottom of this ponzi scheme and recover any further assets is to have the respondent sequestered as the ‘kingpin’. It is for the benefit of the creditors that his estate be sequestered,” the court documents state.
The truth is that no parcels were ever purchased by Tariomix, the liquidators say in their court documents. According to them, the money raised was misappropriated for Liebenberg’s own personal benefit.
Any money received by the investors as payouts was simply money invested by others, according to the liquidators’ court documents. This, they say, can at best be described with the analogy “robbed for Peter to pay Paul”.
Kleynhans’ bank accounts were reportedly used as the accounts into which the Tariomix investors had to deposit their funds. It was allegedly gambled away at several casinos and swapped for the ultimate benefit of Liebenberg, the liquidators say in the court documents.
Millions of rands allegedly changed hands that way. It turned out that the favorite casino was Emporors Palace in Kempton Park.
Liebenberg was reportedly identified as the player in the casino, according to the video footage, but the funds would be deposited by Kleynhans at the casino from her personal bank account which was used to collect funds from investors in the Tariomix scheme.
Once the funds were allocated to Liebenberg’s credit by a casino, he would then allegedly continue gambling with these funds in, among other things, private gambling rooms at the casino.
After such a gamble, according to the allegations in the court papers, some of the gambling chips would either be held by Liebenberg and used as a form of currency in some of his own transactions; or returned for a credit note issued in its favor by the casino in question. It could also be paid out and the cash then taken by him and/or Kleynhans to use to his advantage.
In this regard, the auditor of Tariomix, Dr CG Cloete, testified how he allocated approximately R35 million to Tariomix’s small box in the 2021 financial statements arising from these credits issued by the respective casinos.
According to the court document, approximately R144 million in investor funds were allegedly squandered in this way by gambling and for the benefit of Liebenberg.
Reference is also made to the R50 million worth of diamonds and jewellery allegedly stolen from Liebenberg’s rental house in Cape Town. The liquidators in their court papers the only conclusion that can be drawn is that these assets are from the Tariomix era. They say these are assets that should have been handed over to the liquidators handling Tariomix’s liquidation.
According to them, Liebenberg is liable for this loss of more than R50 million, as he was in unlawful possession and had control over these valuable assets of Tario-mix.
It is argued that Liebenberg is insolvent because his total liabilities undoubtedly exceed his assets and the court should rule on this urgently.
Written by Jean Oosthuizen
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