Sneaky sister stole the family silver
A director of a thriving Cape Town driving school is liable for a R7m swindle from beyond the grave.
Joyce Goosen and her sisters, Sandra van der Westhuizen and Elize Korf, were directors of He & She in 2014 when Joyce devised an elaborate scheme to defraud the company using its fleet credit cards.
She roped in her son, Meyer Goosen, and two companies — Eclipse Systems, owned by Brian Riley, and Tyremac Tyres and Tubes, owned by Mogamad Firoz Abrahams.
According to Van der Westhuizen and Korf, Joyce and Meyer colluded with Riley by using the cards at his company to misappropriate more than R4m. No goods were supplied, Riley took 20% and the rest was deposited into Meyer’s bank account.
In cahoots with Abrahams, they said, Joyce defrauded the company of more than R2m in the same way. In court papers, the sisters say they were “impoverished at the expense of Riley and [Meyer]”.
Van der Westhuizen and Korf sued Deon Brand, the executor of Joyce’s estate, Meyer, Riley and Abrahams in the high court in Cape Town, and this month acting judge Philip Myburgh ruled in their favour and ordered Brand and Joyce’s accomplices to pay back the money with interest.
Myburgh dismissed Meyer’s, Riley’s and Abrahams’s defence that Joyce “gave them the consent to act fraudulently”. Riley claimed Joyce asked him to find someone with a credit card machine to do the fraudulent transactions as He & She “required cash liquidity”, and said whoever assisted would earn a 20% commission. Abrahams, who said Riley approached him in 2014, admitted his card machine was used for the transactions but denied any intention of misappropriating the money even though he retained 20% as commission. In an affidavit, Meyer, who said he is unemployed, admitted he received the stolen money but blamed his late mother.
“My mother told me to utilise some of the money I received in my bank account specifically for the maintenance, repairs and upgrading of Klein Saxenburg farm, after [He & She’s] erstwhile directors had resolved to maintain the farm on which their parents live, and the rest of the money for the purchase of a company motor vehicle for the use of another employee of the company,” said Meyer. “None of the monies was destined for my personal use or benefit, except insofar as I also reside on the farm. I also had no power or authority to stop these payments, nor was I in any manner enriched thereby.”
Meyer said his mother and aunts “took all management decisions” at He & She and some of their children, including himself at one stage, worked in the business. “We simply had to execute the instructions from the three sisters, unquestioningly,” he said. “When my mother died, her share in [He & She] was taken over by the remaining sisters, and the proceeds of the sale of her share paid into a trust, of which my siblings and I are the beneficiaries.”
This week Meyer’s lawyer, Andale Benjamin, said she had not yet received instructions about whether to appeal.
Van der Westhuizen said she and Korf had received no indication that the other parties in the matter intended to appeal, and had not heard from Meyer. “I don’t have any contact with him anymore.”