Embattled Auction Alliance team in bid to jump ship before hammer falls on careers

THE Johannesburg sales team of Auction Alliance is preparing to jump ship to a competitor firm while the team’s former boss, Rael Levitt, holidays abroad.

Yesterday, “the bulk” of the sales team were in job talks with rival house Aucor as Auction Alliance struggled to stay afloat. Aucor is owned by Rayhaan Hassim, a motor dealer from Limpopo who has strong ties to the Polokwane political elite, as well as to Ngoako Ramatlhodi, the former pre- mier of the province.

Auction Alliance is battling a corruption scandal, though its BEE partner, Peter Moyo, who is also the chairman of Vodacom, denied that the company might face liquidation. However, he admitted that “we may be facing retrenchments and we are certainly looking at cost cutting across the board”.

The sales staff have opted to secure their own future in the meantime, however, and are in “advanced” talks with Aucor.

According to Mark Kleynhans, who has been negotiating their jump on Hassim’s behalf, he was approached by a number of Levitt’s staff at the end of last week as the crisis within the nationwide company deepened.

In mid-february, Independent Newspapers blew the lid on a money-making racket involving bank officials, liq- uidators and attorneys who were being paid by Auction Alliance to push business its way. In the wake of the exposé, Levitt stepped down and business began to dry up and the sales team began to look elsewhere.

Until last week, Kleynhans had been a partner of High Street Auctions, and before that he headed the commercial division of Auction Alliance in Johannesburg, but he left in 2007 after a bitter fallout with Levitt.

In an unexpected twist, he is now courting Levitt’s staff and luring them to Aucor, with which he is negotiating a new contract.

“The talks with the Auction Alliance staff are quite advanced and if they agree, they will come with me to Aucor,” he told the Cape Times last night.