Pretoria - Part of the more than R20m investors paid to buy franchises and shares in the controversial biodiesel company De Beer Fuel Ltd (DFF) was used to buy vehicles and babies' nappies, as well as to finance a fruit and vegetable shop.
This is according to court documents submitted on Friday to the Pretoria Commercial Crimes Court in the bail application by Frik de Beer (56), a former director and CEO of the company.
De Beer was released on bail of R15 000 after his daughter, Ella Pretorius (34), a former director, was released on R5 000 bail on Tuesday.
The two face provisional charges of fraud, theft, money laundering and contravention of the Companies Act.
Capt Jurgens Kriek, the investigating officer in the police's serious commercial crimes unit, said more people may be prosecuted later.
His statement said franchise buyers were asked to pay R2m, part of which would be kept in trust to build a biodiesel plant.
But his investigation indicated that this had not happened and that the money had been paid into an ordinary De Beers business account, from which the farm Vlakfontein near Mookgopong (Naboomspruit), for instance, had been bought, and on which De Beer and his family were living.
The case has been postponed to April 30 pending further investigation.
De Beer's promise to franchise holders was that within 18 to 24 months they would be operating their own "biodiesel plants" with algae as production feed, despite the fact that this technology is still far from commercially viable. The "guarantee" was that each reactor could produce 38.4 million litres of biodiesel a year.
GreenFuel Technologies, the American company whose technology was to have been used, cancelled its contract with DBF early in 2007 owing to alleged "significant breach of contract" and default on the part of DBF, which included neglecting to pay its licence fees.
De Beers Fuel sold some 40 million shares to the public between 20c and 150c each without a prospectus.
- Sake24.com
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