[imagesource:here]
It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on the Cajee brothers.
Ameer and Raees Cajee are responsible for Africrypt, a so-called cryptocurrency investment platform that they claim was hacked, causing massive losses for investors who feel they’ve been duped.
When we last covered the story the last known whereabouts of either brother was Raees’s signed affidavit bearing the stamp of the South African High Commission in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, dated July 19, 2021.
In that affidavit, Raees talked about having fled South Africa due to death threats and the alleged kidnapping of his father.
Numerous lawyers and investigators were representing Africrypt clients who claim to have been conned out of millions. The situation is made worse by the lavish spending of the Cajee brothers in the build-up to them leaving South Africa.
Watches, cars, holidays – no expense was spared.
For the update, here’s MyBroadband:
Creditors of the collapsed Africrypt scheme have negotiated a $5 million [around R80 million] payoff with an anonymous outside investor.
Documents MyBroadband has seen indicate that the parties negotiated a successful compromise, accepted by both sides, which must now be made an order of the court.
This is expected to happen at the end of January 2022.
When news of the Cajee brothers first broke it was reported that they had vanished with Bitcoin to the value of more than R55 billion.
That turned out to be way off the mark and Raees later stated that the alleged hack saw the company lose less than $5 million.
Given the settlement value perhaps that was closer to the truth:
The $5 million offer from the anonymous benefactor initially included several conditions, such as that criminal charges against the Cajee brothers be dropped.
It also stated that Africrypt must be taken out of provisional liquidation using $1 million of the offer as trading capital.
They may avoid criminal charges due to the deal but I don’t think that’s going to stop the likes of Juan Meyer from keeping a close eye on their whereabouts.
According to Moneyweb, Africrypt investors who had lost money voted last month to accept the monetary offer from the mystery investor.
However, some of the investors were unhappy with having criminal charges removed and pushed back on that front, putting forward an amended settlement.
The investor also “proposed taking 51% of the company and, apparently, keeping it alive” with the other 49% distributed pro rata to the creditors:
The same investor proposes putting another roughly R15.2 million into the company to keep it going and to take ownership of the intellectual property reportedly created by the two Cajee brothers…
“It’s not the worst deal one could hope for,” said an investor, who asked not to be named. “We get maybe 40c or 50c back in the rand, and the company may be revived in such a way that the other funds are recouped over time.”
It’s unclear whether a total compromise has been reached at this point. MyBroadband reports that it has seen a letter that suggests it has.
We should know more at some stage this week.
[sources:mybroadband&moneyweb]
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