Who is enver motala

The Master retained the four other liquidators to continue with the work. It has taken a bit too long — more than two years — to be precise. But justice has been done. But a lot of shenanigans have happened since the mines in question were placed under liquidation and when Motala took charge. To start with, Pamodzi Investment Holdings, the original owners of Pamodzi Gold were treated so badly by Motala who forced the liquidation even when the company had proof that it had finally raised enough cash to save the business.

But Motala forged ahead, breaking up the assets and selling them piece by piece, a plan that, from a financial perspective, suited him perfectly. However, if the mines had gone back to Pamodzi Holdings, Motala would have been paid per hour. At best that would have been a total of R2 million.

The bullying of concurrent creditors was one of the nasty features of this liquidation process under Motala. Concurrent creditors were small- to-medium-sized contractors who provided services to Pamodzi Gold before the company experienced financial hardships. The dozens and dozens of concurrent creditors lost more than R million when Pamodzi Gold was placed under provisional liquidation.

All their pleas fell on deaf ears as Motala totally excluded them from the process. Perhaps it was his behaviour in relation to the last matter he handled as a joint liquidator, that of failed mining group Pamodzi. That in turn led to the liquidators engaging with Aurora Empowerment Systems, a company that wanted to buy the mines and whose directors included close relatives of two former SA Presidents and the personal lawyer of one of them.

The liquidators allowed Aurora to continue running the mines while it finalised an alleged deal that would provide funding for the purchase. Aurora was given this go-ahead on the understanding that the workers would continue to be paid and fed, and that mine property would be protected and maintained.

Concerned at the reports she received, the Master asked to meet with the liquidators, but Motala proved obdurate, refusing to answer any questions even though his fellow liquidators were willing to do so. In addition, the Master discovered that Motala had made a personal loan to Aurora, without informing her or his fellow liquidators, and that this loan was being repaid on advantageous terms, above other creditors.

This, she said, meant he had a serious conflict of interests when it came to his function as a liquidator. And then, suddenly, an even more basic question emerged: who was he?

Motala has since put up a complex story: that he took the rap for an uncle who was about to leave the country as a political exile, and that he Motala had never committed these crimes. He subsequently applied for those charges to be expunged.

But it was too late. High-profile liquidator Enver Motala is really convicted fraudster Enver Dawood, and runs an operation of "skelms and skermunkels" crooks and scallywags , according to Department of Justice officials. Motala is estimated to have made more than Rmillion in the past decade, rising from nowhere to be appointed to wind up failed companies including Pamodzi Gold, Wendy Machanik Properties, Retail Apparel Group and pyramid scheme Krion.

But his lucky streak came to an end this week when he was sent a nine-page letter from the department, booting him off Pretoria's panel of liquidators. Most alarmingly, master of the high court officials said they had evidence that Motala had a former identity - Enver Dawood, a man who had been "convicted of one count of theft and 93 counts of fraud".

The Insolvency Act says a person cannot be a liquidator if he has "at any time, been convicted of theft, fraud, forgery or.. Although details of "Dawood's conviction" remain unclear, Motala's only defence could be if he had received a suspended sentence.

But when he was first asked by the master "whether or not he had convictions for offences involving dishonesty, [Motala] denied that explicitly", the letter reads. Motala is suing master's official Jaco Cilliers for R1-million for defamation after he told a former colleague the liquidator was a fraudster. Court papers contain a transcript of a conversation in Afrikaans, apparently secretly taped, between Cilliers and former master's official Leon Lategan. Asked to explain, Cilliers says: "I have investigated their union support in many files and [found] everything is fabricated.

Your name is being linked to this SBT and all this fraud.