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Port Elizabeth - It is
amazing that authorities in South Africa are slow to respond to allegations
that somebody has forged court orders, allegedly assigning false case numbers
and apparently using a rubber stamp which they had made for themselves to
make the documents appear genuine.
These allegations are very serious, because it rubbishes the authority of the whole judicial process - ultimately the highest authority in the country where every citizen expects to find resolution to his complaints or have to accept that he is in the wrong.
Yet, authorities have seemingly not acted for close to 18 months since such allegations came to light against Syndicated Debt Collectors and its sister company Atlas Finance. It was up to a private company, Summit Financial Partners, to collect proof in the form of sworn affidavits from court officials and a list of fraudulent case files to prove their suspicions.
Summit is a company that manages garnishee order deductions for large private and public sector employers. A garnishee order instructs employers to deduct installments from its employees’ salaries to repay debts, including legal fees.
A garnishee order needs to be authorised by a judge, which means that a case needs to be opened at a court and that the court can review all the documents relating to the debt. The employee also has the opportunity to present his side of the story.
Summit handles the administrative burden of garnishee deductions for employers. Part of the service is ensuring that garnishee payments are made accurately, stopped once the debt is settled and that irregularities and excessive garnishee amounts are identified, challenged and corrected.
Clark
Garner, CEO of Summit, told Fin24 that he became suspicious when he noticed that
garnishee orders for payments to Syndicated Debt Collectors and Atlas Finance against
his clients’ employees seemed to show higher than normal balances.
An audit of Atlas Finance’s loan agreements proved that the micro-lender had in many cases inflated outstanding amounts with interest rates, initiation fees and service charges above legal limits set in the National Credit Act.
“Together with excessive legal costs, these overstated charges often inflated the judgment debt to more than double the original loan amount,” states Gardner.
Summit immediately stopped processing any deductions requested by Syndicated or Atlas from payrolls managed by Summit. Gardner said he will only process any garnishee orders from Atlas or Syndicated until their validity can be proved. He also took the unusual step to publicly warn other employers – not only his clients – of the suspected behaviour.
This resulted in Syndicated and Atlas starting legal steps of defamation, which came to nothing.
Summit then received information that Syndicated Debt Collectors were fraudulently falsifying court orders. According to the claims, Syndicated had created their own court stamps and had certain employees work after hours and on weekends to create false court orders by forging the signature of the clerk of the court.
Summit set about investigating these claims.
In May 2012, Summit paid a
visit to the Magistrate’s Courts in Randburg and Krugersdorp to validate garnishee
orders issued against Atlas clients. Gardner told Fin24 that his legal team could
not find a valid court file for even a single order of the 16 so-called court
orders they checked.
In all cases, there was either no court file matching the case numbers provided or the case numbers were for matters between other parties.
The Acting Supervisor of the Civil Section at the Randburg Court has issued a sworn affidavit that potentially hundreds of Atlas or Syndicated orders apparently issued out of the Randburg Court could not be legitimate, as the case numbers cited exceeded the highest Court numbers issued out of the Court in both 2010 and 2011.
The sworn affidavit states that it is impossible that the court could have issued as many court orders as Atlas claimed.
The owner of both Atlas Finance and Syndicated Debt Collectors, Jack Halfon, was not available to comment on these allegations.
Aimee Taliadoros, brand manager at Atlas, said a statement will be issued today (Friday) or on Monday. She requested: “Can you please confirm via email that you will honor the ethic set out in the South African Press Code and will neither omit nor add to our written statement.”
The saga is far from over. Gardner told Fin24 that his company took the unusual step to advertise that Summit would check all Atlas Finance loan agreements and statements at no cost, while the authorities are bound to act soon.
- Fin24
*After chasing money on the JSE for 15 years, Adriaan Kruger is now living a relaxed lifestyle in Wilderness and lectures economics part-time at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.
