Sello Tsolo, a challenge supervisor for the Setsoto Municipality in the Eastern Free State, has been barred from returning house from Abu Dhabi for 9 years – greater than three of which have been spent in jail.
Tsolo was lured to Abu Dhabi in 2013 by worldwide scamster and Indian nationwide Amit Lamba on the pretext of investing in a dairy challenge.
He is prevented from returning to SA till he settles what he says is a pretend acknowledgement of debt of about R2 million, that Lamba tricked him into signing.
A switch of shares doc Tsolo thought he was signing, in Arabic, turned out to be an acknowledgement of debt.
That mistake landed him in a UAE jail for 37 months, although he’s nonetheless barred from returning to SA till the debt is paid off, a digital impossibility as he’s additionally prevented from working in the UAE.
Dairy challenge highjacked
Tsolo was project-managing the Setsoto Integrated Dairy (SID) challenge, which was conceived greater than a decade in the past as a means to offer an earnings to hundreds of small-scale farmers in the Free State.
Tsolo and the opposite backers of the challenge have been shocked when their challenge, initially backed by the Free State Department of Agriculture, was deep-sixed by the division and later revived in a barely modified model because the Estina Diary Project, which siphoned R280 million in taxpayer funds to Gupta-controlled accounts, in accordance with the newest Zondo Report.
When Estina first appeared on the scene, Tsolo and others smelt a rat.
The first inform was the marketing strategy, a digital lower and paste of the Setsoso challenge, particularly the capital requirement of R114 million over the primary three years.
“They didn’t even bother to change the figures, it was so obviously a cut and paste of our project,” says Godfrey Marange, a German-Zimbabwean businessman and the originator of the SID challenge.
He had spent greater than a decade finding out the SA dairy trade for methods to enhance it and found that yields may very well be improved as much as 30% in the winter months by stabling cows in so-called ‘cow hotels’, utilizing German dairy expertise.
“The key distinction with our challenge is we had German companions; the Guptas wished to carry in Indian companions. The Guptas copied our ‘integrated dairy project’ over to Estina, however there was nothing built-in about theirs.
“Their challenge was a washout, managed by individuals who knew nothing about dairy, because the Zondo report makes clear. Our challenge has 15 completely different enterprise items, comparable to a bakery and coaching faculty, constructed across the dairy enterprise.
“We have no doubt the Guptas stole our project and intercepted provincial money originally intended for the SID project,” says Marange.
“The different key distinction is ours was commercially viable and clear; the Guptas’ model of it was corrupt to the core.
“And we now know that there was no benefit to local farmers in the Gupta project. It was just another way to siphon money from the state.”
Suspicious hyperlinks
This brings us again to Tsolo, and his disastrous encounter with Lamba.
Tsolo and Marange say they can not set up a direct hyperlink between Lamba and the Guptas, although there are some suspicious intersections, notably the timing of their arrival in SA, and the sudden waning of assist for the SID challenge by the Free State provincial authorities in favour of Estina.
So eager was the Free State Department of Agriculture to assist the SID challenge that it allotted R6 million in its 2012/13 price range for this function.
That’s when the issues started.
The division insisted on appointing a challenge administration firm to approve spending, which was the primary crimson flag.
The cash by no means got here, after which the Setsoto Municipality determined to again out of the challenge.
Tsolo then went to the Land Bank, which dedicated to the funding of R100 million, however the deal was by no means lastly accepted as Tsolo was by now absent from SA.
Lamba arrived in SA in 2012 waving a cheque e-book, and a few apparently severe endorsements from the crown prince of Ajman, UAE, and senior SA authorities officers.
Tsolo was launched to Lamba in 2012 on the advice of a senior official in the Department of Agriculture in the Free State, which gave him some consolation that he was coping with an individual of reputation.
Lamba was internet hosting interviews with potential enterprise companions in the places of work of Trade Investment Limpopo and appeared to all outward appearances to be an investor in search of alternatives.
What was wanted for the SID challenge was funding of R675 million, and Lamba appeared greater than able to again the scheme.
He signed a memorandum of understanding with Tsolo and invited him to Dubai to wrap up the paperwork.
Tsolo flew to Dubai in 2013, believing he was on his solution to organize funding for the dairy challenge.
Lamba, it seems, was a fraudster who was imprisoned in India in 2016 (and since launched) for duping a number of victims into his shakedown operation, apparently with the help of some crooked UAE legal professionals.
The Indian authorities, it seems, have been additionally eager to get their hands on him, which they did in 2016.
Fateful day
“I arrived in Ajman [in the UAE] in the early morning of 27 June 2013,” Tsolo advised Moneyweb from the SA embassy in Abu Dhabi.
“I used to be with Albert Mokoena, who was additionally invited by Amit [Lamba], though I didn’t know him or about his go to.
“Amit got here to our lodge the exact same morning at round 8am and advised us that as an indication of goodwill and appreciation, his firm wished to make us its representatives in SA and Africa, and they’re going to additionally give us shares to the worth of 480 000 AED [Emirati dirham], which is price about R2 million.
“He requested that we first need to go to the federal government places of work to signal for these shares. We arrived on the places of work, which later grew to become clear to us that it was Court of Ajman.
“The presiding officer asked us if I know about the money, to which I said yes, it was for the shares, and he asked me to sign. Everything was in Arabic, and it was an electronic signature.”
Lamba had suckered Tsolo into believing he was signing to obtain shares in a UAE-registered firm that will make him, on behalf of the SID, an organization consultant in Africa.
It was a deadly mistake.
“I only became aware later that what I signed for was actually acknowledgement of debt to Amit’s partner, Shweta Tyagi, for 480 000 AED,” says Tsolo.
Tyagi is reputed to have been Lamba’s girlfriend.
At least two different South African businessmen – Albert Mokoena and Jannie van der Walt – have been likewise allegedly scammed by Lamba, prompting the SA Consulate in Dubai to subject a warning about Lamba in 2013.
Half a dozen more South Africans declare to have been fleeced by the scamster throughout visits to SA in 2012 and 2013.
Zondo testimony
In an affidavit earlier than the Zondo Commission, former mayor of Setsoto Local Municipality, Mbothoma Maduna, testified that the SID (*9*)
Maduna, till lately the speaker for the Thabo Mofutsanyana District Municipality underneath which the Setsoto Local Municipality falls, says he first encountered the built-in dairy idea in 2006 on a visit to Germany, when Marange outlined the main points of the challenge.
Maduna, then government mayor of Setsoto Municipality, was so impressed with the presentation and its potential to revive the Eastern Free State’s erstwhile popularity because the dairy hub of the province that he steered the plan be integrated into the municipality’s Integrated Development Plan.
That plan was one thing fairly sinister, because the Zondo report makes clear.
Peter Thabethe, former head of division of agriculture for the Free State, testified earlier than the Zondo Commission that he carried out desktop analysis that led him to an Indian firm as the one viable mannequin for the dairy challenge.
Maduna confirms Tsolo’s story, and the truth that Tsolo was representing the municipality when he travelled to the UAE 9 years in the past at Lamba’s request to boost funding for the challenge.
Estina “used the fairy tale Indian connection [Paras, an Indian milk producer] to milk more than R250 million from the government, which deliberately or with gross negligence blindly pumped money without asking questions or looking as to how it was spent,” says the report.
Meanwhile, Tsolo stays holed up in the SA embassy in Dubai, dwelling off assist from South African expats.
It’s been 9 years since he has seen his spouse and daughter.
Change.org has began a petition to stress each the SA and UAE governments to permit him house.
Official intervention
The SA Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation raised the matter with the UAE in 2020, however was rebuffed saying a (earlier) petition for Tsolo’s repatriation “was not legally relevant to the creditors’ rights” and that no motion could be taken.
This, although Lamba is a legal identified for shaking down quite a few different individuals world wide in related scams.
“The current SA ambassador, Saad Cachalia, negotiated with the authorities here to allow us to leave, but so far this is to no avail,” Tsolo tells Moneyweb.
“At one level in 2018, there was hope that we could also be allowed to depart, however the course of got here to an abrupt finish.
“Unofficially, we discovered that it was on the instruction of former president Zuma that [the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) staff] cease interfering in our case.
”In response to questions from Moneyweb, Dirco spokesperson Clayton Monyela supplied the next response:
Dirco is conscious of the presence of Mr Tsolo and different SA residents in the UAE and the unlucky circumstances which are stopping them from departing the UAE. Through the South African diplomatic missions in the UAE, DIRCO has been offering them with consular assist since their preliminary arrest;
The three gents in query have been discovered responsible of offences in an UAE Court. After serving their sentences, UAE Law requires them to settle their debt regardless of claims that they have been victims of fraud.
It is commonplace observe for the UAE Government to place journey bans in place in respect of foreigners with excellent debt, stopping them from leaving the UAE till such time because the debt are settled.
Through the years, South Africa raised their plight with the UAE Government on numerous events. The closing choice on the discharge of the gents rests with the UAE authorities.
DIRCO’s efforts are persevering with in the very best curiosity of Mr Tsolo and the opposite South Africans affected in this explicit case. It will not be attainable to connect a timeline.
