Glamour couple in dock for fraud
Dries Marx is said to have earned a salary of R100,000 while allegedly stealing more than R30m from his employer along with his glamorous TV presenter wife Henriëtte and their longtime friend Paul McIntyre.
“It is not about the money for me, even though it is a lot of money. I saw and treated Dries like a son,” Hanno van Dyk, the owner of the Vereeniging-based Yellow Star Manufacturing (YSM), told the Sunday Times.
“He has been in my employ since 2013. I appointed Dries as MD in 2018 and gave him 20% shares in YSM.
“Dries appointed an old friend of his, Paul McIntyre, towards the end of 2019 as his right-hand man in sales and procurement. Dries was earning a salary of R100,000 a month and still Dries, his wife and McIntyre felt the need to steal from me,” said Van Dyk, whose company produces metal castings for industry.
The trio appeared in the commercial crimes court in Pretoria this week and face charges of fraud, theft and money laundering involving R32m.
Henriëtte Marx was the host of the show Net Koffie on DStv’s Afrikaans channel kykNET. The show ran for three seasons, featuring Henriëtte travelling to various countries to experience their coffee, interviewing local celebrities and sharing coffee brewing and coffee food recipes. Some of the stolen money is suspected to have been used to finance her show.
Marx bought a farm in the bushveld but has since given it back because he could not keep up with the payments, said Van Dyk.
“They bought the farm from McIntyre’s uncle Steven McIntyre, a well-known businessman in Vereeniging. They even used my own personnel to do upgrades and building work on the farm without my knowledge.
“The farm Inthaba Zinhle is in the Melkrivier area. On the farm they made some serious improvements, like building an 800m2 lodge, four guest houses, a restaurant and a half Olympic-size swimming pool. All of that was done with money stolen from YSM,” he said.
Van Dyk said he became suspicious in 2020 but did not realise the extent of the looting at the time.
“I started suspecting that something was not right at YSM because I noticed that Marx used YSM funds to support his wife’s business, Coffee Excellence, for fuel, stationery and building costs.”
He asked Marx to stop.
“At that time the Covid lockdown was implemented and during 2020 and 2021 I did not visit YSM more than five times, and I relied on the management reports prepared and presented to me by Dries.”
David Mokoteli was also a member of the YSM management with shares in the business.
“At the end of 2021 and again in February 2022 David came to my house to complain about the situation at YSM but could not pinpoint the exact problems as his duties are to manage the production.”
Then the breakthrough came.
“On April 13 last year, the owner of one of the companies doing business with YSM came to my house to complain about the service received from YSM.”
Van Dyk looked up the customer’s account on the YSM system.
“I asked him why his account with YSM was in arrears in the amount of R21m. He denied it and we established that the amount outstanding was less than R18m.
“We also established that Dries had changed the banking details to that of DHM Traders one of the companies the three accused used to raid our factory.”
Van Dyk said the customer had unknowingly paid the difference into the DHM Traders account.
“I queried Marx as to why this customer was owing YSM R21m, with R9m of the debt older than four months. Dries did not respond to my satisfaction and I started interrogating the financial records and systems from January 1 2020 to April 30 2022, electronically.” Van Dyk said he discovered several discrepancies and anomalies.
“In April last year I went to the foundry in Vereeniging and suspended Dries and McIntyre.”
The Sunday Times has seen a forensic report compiled for Van Dyk by forensic auditor JJ Grobler of Premium Forensics.
According to the report, Marx, his wife and McIntyre allegedly used a variety of companies under their directorship, falsified invoices and weighbridge amounts to extract money from YSM.
Van Dyk said he felt unsafe.
“We don’t know how many people lost money because of this situation, but someone shot at my partner David Mokoteli a while ago and since then I’ve been wearing a bulletproof vest when I travel to the factory.”
Speaking for all three accused, McIntyre’s lawyer, Gerhard Nel, declined to comment.
Waldimar Pelser, M-Net’s director for premium channels, said: “Net Koffie was a lifestyle show produced by Coffee Excellence. After the show started airing in April 2022, allegations of wrongdoing were brought to kykNET’s attention, but the investigation was still pending. The last episode was broadcast on 26 June 2022 and the show was not renewed for another season.”