4. Volkskas International

In 1976 Bernard Glazer acquired control of a UK-registered company, Ashbourne Investments Ltd. The acquisition of Ashbourne became the subject of a UK Department of Trade investigation that produced a seven-volume report in 1975. The investigation arose as a result of technical difficulties with the bid process. The take-over of Ashbourne Investments by Bernard Glazer attracted much attention from British and South African authorities such as The Bank of England, Dr. Stals [South African Reserve Bank], Lord Shawcross [London Take-over Panel & Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, NY] and Carel de Wet [SA ambassador in London].

After much ado, as will be dealt with below, Glazer acquired control of Ashbourne Investments, and Incentive Investments became the ultimate holding company. The 1982 financials were filed with Companies House London two years after the fact on 13 December 1984. The 1983 financials are treated in a similar manner and filed on 28 December 1984. During this time it would appear that most of the subsidiaries were being dissolved or disposed of. It is also intimated that there was a legal claim for damages against a former MD [of Chelton] inter alia on the basis of misrepresentation made at the time of the sale. This issue was settled in December 1988 with a settlement amount of £1,633,500, part of which was satisfied by way of share issue. It is not clear what the ‘share issue’ entailed. Another interesting book entry appears on the 26 June 1987 when ‘a subsidiary made donations to charities under deeds of covenants amounting to £737,000.’

Feinstein states: ‘It is correct that Amarena Holdings Inc held 75 ‘A’ ordinary shares in Incentive Investments Limited. The holding of shares by Chase Manhattan Nominees Ltd [who held 75 ‘A’ shares, making them a 50% shareholder of Incentive], appears to be completely irrelevant. …Incentive was regarded as an unprofitable investment and was disposed of, in or about April 1988 to Joanna Holdings Limited and Nina Bonita SA, two companies nominated by the other holders of shares in Incentive. [Bearing in mind that the only ‘other holders of shares’ were Chase Nominees.]. Sam Glazer collaborates this in his Response, which states: ‘…was beneficially sold by the Administrators in or about 1987 to a group of investors which included the other shareholders on Incentive Investments.’

In response to the Administrators statements we can only follow the Annual Returns, as submitted to Companies House UK, which tells a different tale. Julius Feinstein and Sam Glazer did in fact resign as directors on 11 June 1987. J. Margulies and I. Pels are appointed as directors on 26 June 1987 and neither holds a beneficial interest in the share capital of the Company. Naturally the 1988 financials are missing from the Companies House records.

Mr. Margulies is feeling very charitable and sets up the “Margulies Charitable Foundation Ltd”, with various charitable donation made from 1987 onwards. The Annual Return for 1993 states that Amarena Holdings Inc and Catton Securities [Swiss Bank Corp] each hold 75 ‘A’ shares. On the 10 April 1995 [bear in mind that 7 years has elapsed since the Administrators ‘sold’ the shareholding of Incentive and 7 months before the first tranche of the Trust is paid to the beneficiaries] Amerana Holdings Inc transfers the 75 ‘A’ shares to Duncan Nominees Ltd of 1 Hobart Place, London. Duncan Lawrie is a small Private Bank situated at the same address. On 1 May 1997 [2 weeks prior to an Agreement signed between Michele and the Administrators to oust her from the Will] Swiss Bank Corp transfer their 75 ‘A’ shares to Barclays Nominees (Grove) Ltd and finally the 150 ‘A’ shares are consolidated on 15 July 1998 and are all held by Duncan Nominees. It is most interesting to note that Incentive Investments together with all its subsidiary companies have been put into voluntary liquidation in March 2004.

The company Ashbourne Investments Ltd was a holding company listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) with subsidiaries in the financial, industrial and property sectors. At the end of April 1973 its shares were valued at 48p each, making a market capitalisation of about £4, 25 million. It was a medium-sized company, with strategically valuable assets.

First among these was ES Schwab & Co Ltd, which Ashbourne held through a subsidiary, Coptic Finance Ltd. In 1971 the issued share capital of the bank was £350 000; it was increased to £1 million following an issue by Ashbourne of loan stock in 1972. According to the investigation report, it had built up a ‘sound reputation’ in the City and ‘good contacts’ abroad. It could make loans, it could deal in securities and it held certain permissions to hold currency balances with foreign banks.

According to the investigation report, ‘Schwab’s business consisted principally of the provision of mortgage and other finance for clients and for Ashbourne, the underwriting of new issues, and advising and acting for clients and Ashbourne in takeover bids. Schwab also invested on its own behalf and on behalf of investment clients and Ashbourne in quoted and unquoted companies. It had a modest deposit-taking and lending business. Schwab also acted as a banker for Ashbourne.’ It made a profit of £211 000 in 1973.

The intermediate holding company was Coptic Finance Ltd, which had an unusually long list of subsidiaries about which nothing was ever discussed in the financial statements. The possibility of bank accounts being held in the names of these companies and used for channelling money needs to be investigated.

Ashbourne’s industrial holdings included a number of subsidiaries which made bathroom and kitchen equipment and fittings, John Boulding & Sons; surgical supplies and equipment; printed circuit boards, Rivlin Group; antenna systems, Chelton Group; and static discharge devices for civil and military aircraft. It seems likely that it held a number of patents.

If the holdings so far look strangely diversified, then one company held by Ashbourne looks distinctly odd: the Argentine Southern Land Co Ltd (ASL) was a quoted English company that, together with its wholly-owned subsidiary The Patagonian Sheep Farming Co (1908) Ltd, owned vast tracts of land in the Argentine and ‘had considerable cash resources in England’. It traded in the Argentine as ‘sheep and cattle breeders and producers of wool and livestock’. The Anglo Welsh Investment Trust (Continuation) was another investment whereby Ashbourne held a 31% interest. The Company also held an 11% interest in Control Securities Limited.

The acquisition of Ashbourne was fronted by two young accountants, Lionel Casper and Brian Simmons, who formed a company called LC Securities (Properties) Ltd in 1969 to ‘carry on business as merger and investment advisers’. One of their clients was Bernard Glazer, who by 1973 had placed £150 000 with LC. (By 1970 Glazer would have earned R16 million from the sale of the properties held by ACP Investments Ltd to Urban Investments Ltd. In 1972 he sold land to the Botswana government for the development of Francistown.) The investigation report made the nature of their relationship quite clear: ‘Mr Casper usually consulted Mr Glazer before he … carried out transactions on Mr Glazer’s behalf, but occasionally he acted at his own discretion.’ The investigation report reveals the following, based on Casper’s testimony: ‘Apart from his £150 000 portfolio in London, Mr Glazer had about £1,5 million that he wished to invest permanently in the United Kingdom. He had asked Mr Casper to find a suitable investment for these funds in the form of a public company, preferably in real estate, with good capital growth potential which he could purchase outright and over which he would have complete control.’

In December 1972 Casper changed the name of his company to London Cavendish Securities Ltd with the intention of launching it as a merchant bank. As part of this strategy he’d acquired 30% of the shares of a quoted investment company called Crest International Securities Ltd ‘through purchases … made by LC, certain of its investment clients and associates, and himself and Mr Simmons…’ It seems likely that the bulk of the funds for this acquisition came from Glazer.

Crest International Securities was, until 1970, called The Siberian Syndicate Ltd, which had mining interests in Russia and elsewhere, including shares in Consolidated Gold Fields. Records are missing from the files for the years 1959-1969, but it appears to have been held 63% by Standard Bank Nominees (Transvaal) Ltd and the board was controlled by the Lubners of South Africa (PGSI) until this takeover, after which Casper ended up, at the tender age of 31, as chairman and managing director of Crest. Casper’s plan, as told to the investigation team, was to use Crest as a stock exchange vehicle for acquisitions and takeovers. However, there was clearly a much bigger agenda in the background. This company is dealt with in a separate chapter.

Casper used share and loan stock issues in Crest to acquire properties and quoted investments until by September 1973 Crest’s market capitalisation was about £1,4 million. Its investments at that stage included the whole of the share capital of a company called London & Foreign Investment Trust Ltd, an investment trust with a net asset value of about

£735 000, and a 50% interest in a property development in Amsterdam. Ladbroke’s held the other 50%.

Despite his success with Crest, Casper had no luck in his attempt to turn London Cavendish into a bank. He was unable to attract sufficient deposits, capital or reserves to get the all-important certificate of recognition that he needed. He offered this as the reason why he decided to acquire a large enough shareholding – say 20% – in Ashbourne, which had ES Schwab as a subsidiary, to ‘get onto the board’. By September 1973 Crest held 11,3% of Ashbourne’s issued share capital, but didn’t have the resources to go further.

At this point he and his partner Simmons teamed up with two chartered accountants, Stephen Barry and Stephen Ross, who managed a small investment fund of around

£1,5 million under the banner of Corporate Guarantee Trust Ltd. Corporate acquired 9,7% of Ashbourne’s equity; it accomplished this by means of ‘secured loans through two separate stockbrokers and some spare cash’; Crest and Corporate jointly held 21% of Ashbourne’s issued share capital. However, they couldn’t get themselves nominated on the board, so, to go with Casper’s version of events, he approached Glazer to get involved. It’s quite possible, however, that the pressure was being exerted in the other direction.

The report puts it like this: ‘Although Mr Casper’s proposal did not give Mr Glazer the measure of control which he had previously stipulated, he showed immediate interest in it. In the first week of November [Glazer] made available £350 000 at the Overseas Branch of Midland Bank Ltd … for the purchase of Ashbourne shares.’ Casper visited Glazer in Johannesburg, where Glazer committed to purchasing 28% of Ashbourne, but got Casper to sign a written heads of agreement that Casper and his colleagues in England would, for a period of ten years, bind themselves to exercise their respective votes in the manner directed by him (Mr Glazer). In this way they would jointly control about 52% of the company. At a price of about 55p per share (required in terms of the City Code because of the price that Corporate had recently paid to acquire its blocks of shares) Glazer was in for £1 354 000.

On the same day that Casper signed the agreement with Glazer, Simmons and Barry took their news to the Ashbourne board and stated that, as required by the City Code, they’d also be making a bid for the remainder of the company at the same price.

However, on 12 November 1973 the UK stock market went into freefall and the consortium found it impossible to secure the £3,5 million needed to take up the remaining 48% of shares that they were obliged to make an offer for. (Glazer had increased his deposit of funds with Midland Bank from £350 000 to £1 million during that same day, representing his commitment to the deal.)

Casper turned to a mentor of his, William George Stern, who owned Wilstar Securities Ltd, which held industrial and property portfolio worth some £163 million. Stern was also involved with the Crown Agents and a whole chapter is devoted to him in the report of the Justice Fay Commission into the activities of the Crown Agents leading up to their collapse in 1974. Despite the state of the market, and the onerous burden it placed on Stern, he offered to underwrite the outstanding amount. His involvement at this stage suggests that there may have been other background forces at work.

The consortium’s failure to make good the bid for Ashbourne due to the collapse in the market was the subject of the Department of Trade investigation and an orderly selling off of the assets of Crest International Securities followed (see chapter on Crest) while Glazer bought Ashbourne through another vehicle, Topview and its subsidiary Incentive Investments. In fact it’s possible that Glazer bought all or most of the subsidiaries of Crest through the back door using nominee shareholders or front companies. If this was so, however, these assets were not declared in his estate.

A case in point is the sale in 1975 of Ashbourne’s 24% interest in Argentine Southern Land Co (ASL) to Great Western Societe Anonyme, a Luxembourg company with invisible shareholders. This needs to be investigated.

Casper sold Crest’s 12,2% shareholding in Ashbourne to Topview, a company ostensibly owned by a French property developer, Leon Faust, for about £138 000; this represented a share price of less than 13p a share. Corporate went into voluntary liquidation and sold its 9,7% share in Ashbourne to Topview for £150 000, which represented about 17,5p a share. By the end of 1975, following other purchases of Ashbourne shares, Topview held 23,6%; Glazer still held 22,1% of Ashbourne directly. The Takeover Panel had ruled that he was restricted from selling these in terms of the failed takeover bid, so he used a £100 shelf company called Incentive Investments to take over his share. Incentive made its bid for Ashbourne through County Bank Ltd and on 23 June 1976 the offer went unconditional with 80,97% acceptances in respect of the shares and a good portion of the loan stock.

By the end of 1977 Incentive had acquired all the outstanding shares and obtained complete control of Ashbourne. Faust (Topview) and Glazer held the entire beneficial interest in Incentive, with Glazer holding 75 of the 100 ‘A’ shares and Topview the rest. These ‘A’ shares only carried one vote each. The heavyweight directors that he’d brought on board held 10 ‘B’ shares between them, each of which carried 11 votes, but no rights to dividends nor participation in a liquidation.

These holders of the ‘B’ shares had the look and feel of London’s ‘A’ team: Lord Mancroft; Norman Henry Castle; Lord Fisher of Camden; and Ephraim Solomon Margulies. Lord Mancroft had been lord-in-waiting to the Queen from 1952 to 1954, a parliamentary secretary for the Ministry of Defence, a minister without portfolio during 1957-58, and chairman of a clutch of gambling-related boards, including horseracing and greyhound racing. It should be remembered that Glazer was in a 50/50 partnership with British gaming company Ladbrokes in Holland. Lord Mancroft was also a director of Bank Leumi, a bank which is inextricably linked with the history of the Zionist movement and the economic development of the State of Israel. Leumi, along with Bank Hapoalim, United Mizrahi Bank and Israel Discount Bank, was convicted of fraud for its role in a 1983 stock scandal that led to the collapse of Israel’s securities market and a $7 billion government bailout. Lord Mancroft was also a member of the Council of Tribunals from 1970 to 1980. He was a director of Group 4 Total Security, which is the security and services operation company of Group 4 Falck, the world’s second-largest security and related services company. Margulies was a director of S&W Berisford & Co Ltd and Berisford Mocatta & Co Ltd.

After the takeover, Glazer and his accountant Julius Feinstein – later one of the administrators of his estate – became directors of Incentive, Ashbourne and ES Schwab; Lord Mancroft was appointed chairman of Incentive and ES Schwab; Castle, of Ashbourne.

In December 1981 Ashbourne sold Coptic Finance, with its subsidiary ES Schwab & Co. A 25% share went to Glazer’s Panamanian holding company Amarena Holdings Inc., the other 75% to a company called Boohat Thirty Nine Ltd which was a shelf company that had been acquired for the purpose by the Volkskas Group Ltd of South Africa. ES Schwab was renamed Volkskas International. The reason for this change to a foreign ownership structure may be explained by the following statement from The Collapse of the Franklin National Bank by Joan Edelman Spero: ‘Foreign banks operating in such an important international financial centre as London need not conform to regulation that applies to banks chartered there.’

Over the following two years Ashbourne sold off all of its subsidiaries and was reduced to a virtual shell; its turnover went from more than £5 million in 1981 to just £60 000 in 1984. In 1982 it was converted to a private company and by July 1983 Lord Mancroft, Levison, Margulies and Castle had all resigned, Lord Fisher having passed away in 1979.

New directors appointed to the board of ES Schwab/Volkskas International as per the 1982 financial statements were LP Korsten as chairman, A Pienaar as managing director, Dr DC Cronje and Dr PR Morkel; a few alternate directors with names just as distinctively Afrikaans were also appointed. The new chairman, LP (Laurie) Korsten, would later be charged with ‘stealing more than R30 million from the AMK Technologies pension fund in a case billed as “South Africa’s biggest ever pension fraud” ’; the judge dismissed the case without requiring he or his co-accused (his brother) to present their defence (www.moneyweb.co.za, 19 November 2000). Danie Cronje had joined Volkskas in 1975 and would go on to become the deputy group chief executive of Absa until 1997. He is presently chairman of Absa and non-executive chairman of insurance services group Sage (see property portfolio and Crest International Securities). Dr PR Morkel was a director of Iscor, the government-owned iron- and steel-producing corporation whose bond issues were used as a front for foreign loans to the South African government via European-American Bank while the country was still under economic sanctions.

The plan for Volkskas International according to the directors’ report for 1982, was to ‘broaden the scope of the company’s activities with particular emphasis on international banking business’. The ultimate holding company was given as Volkskas Group Ltd in South Africa, its bankers were given as Barclays, Midland, National Westminster and Williams & Glyn’s, and its foreign correspondent banks were given as Banque Bruxelles Lambert S.A. of Brussels; Banque Populaire Suisse (Zurich); Credit Lyonnais S.A.(Paris); Credito Italiano (Milan); Deutsche Bank A.G. (Frankfurt); Hollandsche Bank Unie N.V. (Amsterdam); Chase Manhattan Bank (New York); Manufacturers Hanover-Trust Company (New York); Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (Stockholm); and Toronto-Dominion Bank (Montreal). The new auditors for Coptic and Volkskas International were Dearden Farrow.

The authorised share capital for Coptic and Ashbourne was increased to £10 million each – Coptic from a base of £440 000; Volkskas, from £1 million. In 1982, Volkskas International’s issued share capital was increased twice – first on 6 April by £1,6 million and then on 30 June by another £2,4 million. These shares were issued to Coptic Finance and were paid for by long-term, interest-free loans to Coptic Finance of £1 million by Glazer and £3 million by Volkskas Ltd in South Africa, which made its loan via Boohat Thirty Nine. Both parties had made smaller loans the year before and the totals owing were repayable in three tranches in 1987.

These loans were reflected in the consolidated accounts of Boohat Thirty Nine, the holding entity for Coptic Finance. However, while the statements for Coptic Finance reflect an amount owing to group companies (the amount of its loan from Volkskas Ltd of South Africa via Boohat) of some £3,5 million, the accounts of Boohat reflect and amount owing from group companies of £6,35 million. However, those same accounts list the only subsidiaries as being Coptic Finance (which was apparently a holding company and did not trade during the year), Volkskas International and ESS Nominees Ltd (also listed as non-trading). The Volkskas International financials for 1983 and 1984 were missing from the Companies House files, but one would have to assume that Boohat made a further ‘loan’ to Volkskas International of some £2,8 million. It’s not clear whether Glazer made a similar additional loan. This would need to be investigated.

More intriguing is the steep trajectory made by the bank’s levels of deposits and advances over this period. The level of deposits at ES Schwab & Co had remained well below £1 million until the end of the 1980 financial year. Then, just prior to it being taken over by Volkskas the level of deposits suddenly started to climb. They reached £2,9 million in 1981 and jumped again to £4,2 million the next year, after the change of ownership and name. By the time of the 1983 financial statements they had rocketed to over £15 million! These funds had been ‘loaned’ out (£13 million) and ‘placed on short-term deposit with other banks’ (£4 million, up from zero the year before). It’s not clear whether these were local UK-originated deposits or whether they had emanated from Volkskas in South Africa, but this should make it clear: South Africa held whites-only elections in 1983; a trilateral parliament was voted into power and came into being in 1984; PW Botha made his famous Rubicon speech in 1985. The writing was on the wall for white power and the Broederbond members of the Volkskas board would have been well aware of that while these plans were being drafted. The possibility exists that this was the primary channel through which billions of rands were routed out of South Africa to foreign banks. A study of the rand/dollar and rand/pound exchange rates (see below) bears testimony to this: The structures were put in place prior to 1984 and the flood began in that year, the year in which Glazer died. The question has to be asked, therefore, which other banks did Volkskas International have accounts with, either in its own name or for and on behalf of nominee clients? All movements of funds through these accounts would have to be investigated.

It is known that Glazer had a fallout with Cronje at this time and it may well have been over this plan to use the structures he’d set up as a vehicle for capital flight on a grand scale. Either way, Bernard Glazer and Julius Feinstein both resigned as directors of Coptic Finance and Volkskas International in November 1983; the loan from Amarena was terminated. However the official notification to Companies House of their resignation was only registered four months later, on 2 April 1984.

On 17 July 1984 Bernard Glazer passed away

On 5 October the respective boards approved the next set of financial statements for Boohat, Coptic Finance and Volkskas International and promptly registered them with Companies House. This is important: A process that had sometimes taken up to two years this time took only a few months. The statements all reflected that Volkskas Limited, ‘incorporated in the Republic of South Africa,’ had replaced Amarena Holdings as a 25% shareholder, with Boohat Thirty Nine still holding the other 75%. However, a closer look reveals that the Volkskas Limited that took over Amarena’s shareholding was in fact not the same one that had been ‘incorporated in the Republic of South Africa’. In the notes to the Boohat Thirty Nine statements a new subsidiary was listed, called Monkgold, which had ‘changed its name to Volkskas Limited on 25 April 1984’.

Records at Companies House reveal that Monkgold was in fact ‘incorporated in England/Wales’ by an entity called Instant Companies Ltd of 7 Bell Yard, London, in January 1983. Its registered address, secretary, directors and Memorandum of Association was changed on 5 January 1984; its name, to Volkskas Limited, on 25 April 1984 – and again one year later to Volkskas (UK) Limited. Cronje, AG Lewis and PM Vivier were appointed directors on 5 October 1984. The notes to the same set of financials stated the following: ‘On 30 March 1984 Volkskas Limited, incorporated in the Republic of South Africa, established its Branch in London. Consequently, at the close of business on that date Volkskas International Limited transferred its trade and all the assets and liabilities, except for investments in subsidiaries, to Volkskas Limited.’ Everything had been shifted and set up under another umbrella, an umbrella that had been made to look like it was being taken over by the South African company when in fact it wasn’t. The Eurocurrency market is an international money market for currencies deposited and re-lent outside their countries of origin. There is a Eurocurrency market for many currencies (was/is there one for the rand?) but the main one is the dollar. The Eurocurrency market boomed in the late sixties and early seventies as international banking expanded exponentially; it went from $14 billion in 1964 to nearly $380 billion in 1977 (Collapse of the Franklin National Bank, pp17 & 22). ‘The major participants in this wholesale market are banks from many countries located in Europe, especially in London, the most important centre of the market. Because the currencies and banks in the Eurocurrency market are outside the country of origin they have been largely exempt from national regulation.

‘Eurodollar deposits are short-term deposits placed by central banks or monetary authorities, commercial banks, large corporations, or insurance companies. These institutions hold large amounts of dollars which they prefer to deposit outside the [country where the owner of the funds resides] for a variety of reasons: higher yields, avoidance of national controls including taxation, political concerns. These deposits are transformed by Eurobanks into large credits, ranging from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, mainly to prime customers: other banks, large corporations, public entities, or governments. Such loans are used to finance both trade and domestic transactions. Their terms range from “call” to ten years and their interest rate in recent years has been a floating rate linked to the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR)… Governments do not regularly collect statistics on the volume of trading and banks consider their trading activities highly confidential. Several studies, however, reveal the huge dimensions of such operations.’

Despite all of the above, despite the fact that the trade, assets and liabilities of Volkskas International having been transferred to it, and despite South Africa’s position as the world’s primary producer of gold, the financial statements of Volkskas (UK) Ltd (formerly Volkskas Ltd, formerly Monkgold) stated consistently, from 1984 until it was voluntarily wound up and dissolved in 1991, that the company ‘has not traded during the period’.

The financial statements of Volkskas International for the 1983 and 1984 financial years appear to have gone missing from the Companies House records, but the accounts for the year ended 31 March 1985 also state, quite simply, that the company ‘has not traded during the period’, and one has to go to the accounts of Boohat and Coptic Finance to find out what happened to its assets. Which was quite simple: they disappeared. Not a trace of a deposit or a loan anywhere in the consolidated accounts from 1984 onwards. The only balances reflected were those relating to loans that had been necessary to create the structure and buy up shares in the first place – all of which had been neatly cancelled out and written off and repaid by 1987. (The authorised and issued share capital of both Coptic Finance and Volkskas International had also been reduced to £100 following a resolution passed at the extraordinary general meeting of 5 October 1984.) A note stated that, ‘£1 176 108 was originally due to Amarena Holdings Inc., which was taken over by Volkskas Ltd, Pretoria, on 23 September 1984.’ Once again, was this taken over by Volkskas Ltd, Pretoria, or Volkskas (UK) Ltd, formerly Monkgold and what were the implications of this for the Glazer estate? Glazer’s will still had him owning 25% of Coptic Finance and who held the Banking Liscence?

The statements for all these companies from 1984 onwards stated the same thing: ‘The Company has not traded during the period.’ They were all dissolved in 1991, the year that Absa (Amalgamated Banks of South Africa) was formed through the amalgamation of Volkskas and other South African banks Allied and United.

The auditors during this period were Dearden Farrow, who would later merge with BDO Binder Hamlyn. Binder Hamlyn would merge with Arthur Andersen in 1994. However, they resigned as auditors from all the abovementioned companies in 1989 and KPMG Peat Marwick took over during the winding up period.

Another noteworthy fact that emerges from the same set of financials is that Glazer and Feinstein were listed as having resigned, but no mention was made of Glazer’s passing. Technically they didn’t have to, as he’d resigned and no longer held shares, at least according to them. The question remains: Who owns the banking licence when South Africa was at its apex of sanctions? It would seem probable that Bernard Glazer fiduciary position with interests in many countries pertaining to strategic minerals provided the necessary infrastructure to meet the trans- national flow of resources and capital. However, this omission dovetails quite conveniently with other apparent efforts by the administrators and others to conceal the fact that he’d died. For example, his continued appearance in the Who’s Who of South Africa until 1991 – an action that would have required the positive confirmation of his details, according to its publishers. The origins of this confirmation should be investigated. Years later Bernard’s daughter Michele would query overseas travel expenses by the administrators of his estate; she would be told that the trip had been made to ‘finalise the settlement and other matters relating to legal action in the High Court in London which the late Mr Glazer and his co-shareholders in Incentive Investments commenced just prior to [his] death’. The details of this court action should be investigated.

When Coptic Finance and Volkskas International were finally wound up the loans by Volkskas were shown to be worth £2. The shares were transferred to Absa and a new batch of directors were appointed. On 20 December 1992 a letter from KPMG Peat Marwick and addressed to Volkskas International stated, “As the Company is no longer trading, we understand that the members wish to take advantage of the provisions of Section 250(1)(b), exempting the company from the obligation to produce audited accounts. We will then cease to hold office.” Volkskas International continued for another seven years without audited accounts, while the rand continued to slide. On 7 September 1999 it was finally dissolved.