Recommends the court to place it in liquidation.
Libertas GH directors, George Grujic, left, and Ahmed Yasin Hossenbocus, right. Picture: Supplied
Troubled crypto-and-then-some investment company Libertas GH is heading for liquidation after its second business rescue practitioner pulled the plug on rescue proceedings this week.
This is just days after director Ahmad Yasin Hossenbocus told investors there was capital waiting to be deployed once the company emerged from rescue.
Business rescue practitioner Thomas Samons told creditors and affected parties on 8 September that he had reached the decision after investigating the affairs of the company.
“After extensive consultations and further substantial progress made in the statutory section 141 investigation into the affairs of Libertas GH,” Samons wrote, “the BRP has concluded that the conversion of the entity’s status from business rescue to liquidation is inevitable due to the undue pressure.”
He went further than his predecessor, Danie van Jaarsveld, who resigned as Libertas’ business rescue practitioner previously after raising concerns about funding and differences over how the rescue should proceed.
“The BRP has decided to terminate the business rescue proceedings and shall be applying to court to formally convert the current rescue proceedings into a liquidation,” Samons said.
A scheduled creditors’ meeting was also cancelled, with Samons telling affected parties they would instead be advised of the outcome of the liquidation application.
Undue pressure on BRP
The BRP exited days after Hossenbocus published a video message appealing directly to investors ahead of a planned vote on the future of Libertas. In it he acknowledged that he could not guarantee investors would recover all their money.
“I believe there’s a credible, evidence-backed path to recovering substantially more of your capital through business rescue than through liquidation,” Hossenbocus said.
He then said liquidation could destroy value while business rescue provided time to realise assets, noting the company’s interest in a plastic-to-diesel operation, a Bosnia plant, equipment recoveries, outstanding claims and investments and technology.
Hossenbocus also claimed Libertas had been on the verge of securing a R250 million facility just two weeks before entering business rescue.
“It was backed by institutional investors who have done their own independent due diligence, and we passed it,” he said. He later claimed the investors remained prepared to provide funding once Libertas was out of rescue.
“There’s real capital waiting on the other side of us, not hypothetical capital,” Hossenbocus said.
First-go BRP Van Jaarsveld’s resignation raised questions about whether the funding and assets required to rescue Libertas could be substantiated.
The Citizen previously reported that the alleged crypto investment operation linked to Hossenbocus may have taken hundreds of millions of rands from investors, while Libertas and its representatives have denied wrongdoing and rejected allegations that it operated as a Ponzi scheme.
IRS Forensic Investigations’ Chad Thomas, whose company represents several investors, previously said investors believed their money was being deployed in cryptocurrency mining involving a Serbian partner operating in Bosnia.
Forensic investigation
Thomas said explanations later changed, including that money was tied up in a South African plastic-to-diesel operation and that funds intended for investors were caught in a European transaction. He estimated exposure at between R600 million and R800 million.
Thomas said the decision by two practitioners to abandon the rescue raised serious questions about the company’s ability to substantiate its claims.
“It seems that the principal(s) of Libertas tell a good story, but when it comes to backing it up with empirical facts, they can’t,” he said and added that he had been informed that investors had opened criminal cases at Midrand and Sandton police stations and that he was also preparing a submission to the Hawks.
BRP van Jaarsveld previously told The Citizen that he had been shown evidence that mining activities existed but questioned whether the value was there to match the money invested.
“A tremendous amount of money came in. The question is: where is the money? He said it was there, but I could not see the value,” he said.
His resignation letter also recorded “material differences” with Hossenbocus and said he had “not been provided with sufficient evidence confirming the availability of funding” needed to support the rescue and investigations.
Samons’ letter does not disclose what his investigation uncovered or explain what he meant by “undue pressure”. The telephone number at the bottom of his letterhead remained unavailable when The Citizen tried to reach him for comment.
