Scam accused's assets frozen

Johannesburg - The assets of lawyer Dean Rees - an alleged recruiter for a Ponzi scheme reportedly headed by Barry Tannenbaum - have been frozen, the Financial Mail said on Thursday.

According to a recent investigation, Rees sought investors for Tannenbaum's scheme that supposedly imported pharmaceutical drugs into SA and then sold them on to generic drug manufacturers.

Although Rees said he was an unwitting pawn of Tannenbaum, his assets were frozen this week by the Queen's Bench division of the UK High court in London, the FM added.

The applicant in the matter was Qatar-based real estate company Barwa.

It had lent $31.3m to Tannenbaum's companies in two tranches.

However, to obtain the freezing order, Barwa used a written statutory declaration from Tannenbaum in which he claimed that Rees and another investor James Paterson set up a fraudulent scheme, the FM said.

Though this declaration was not yet public, it would be the first major step that Tannebaum had taken to defend himself and put the blame on others, the FM added.

"However, Tannenbaum's attorney Darryl Ackerman told the FM Tannenbaum had not signed the document," the publication noted.

When contacted, Rees said he would fight this "most vigorously". According to the FM, the UK court order specifically froze nine bank accounts belonging to Rees and his companies, including four at Investec and others in Hong Kong, New York and Switzerland.

The order also demanded that Rees hand his passport to Barwa's lawyers and that he provide a list of all his assets.

- Sapa