| Thu 3 Mar 2005, 10:49 | | Kebble to try the constitutional court option |
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Kebble to try the constitutional court option
March 3, 2005
By Nicky Smith and Wiseman khuzwayo
Johannesburg - Brett Kebble, the chief executive of JCI and Western Areas, yesterday decided to go to the constitutional court to have a supreme court of appeals order set aside to avoid paying R37 million to DRDGold in terms of an agreement signed in 2000.
Adam Anderson, the legal adviser for DRDGold, said Kebble`s legal team had been given until Tuesday next week to provide Anderson with a copy of the application for leave to appeal, or face having property attached.
Anderson said he could see no basis for JCI`s appeal to the constitutional court. When he had asked Sharon Wapnick, the legal adviser to the Kebbles, she had not been able to furnish him with one.
Kebble said that JCI would not be conducting its appeal by correspondence and that his team had 15 days to file an appeal. He said JCI was appealing because it `felt aggrieved` by the judgment.
He said having the appeal heard would mean getting everyone back into court, something he was prepared to do because `DRD has cheated us`.
Kebble explained that DRD wanted option fees for shares that were never sold back to JCI, but rather back to Western Areas.
The case dates back to between 1999 and 2000, when there was a close relationship between Consolidated African Mines (CAM), JCI and Western Areas.
CAM controlled JCI, and JCI had a 43 percent shareholding in Western Areas and also controlled its board.
Between 1998 and 1999, JCI directors had planned Project Eagle, which was to be a merger of JCI, Western Areas, CAM and other gold mining companies with the intention of creating a large, Canadian-listed gold company.
In December 1999 Western Areas opened share trading accounts with stockbrokers. Shares in JCI, CAM, Randfontein Estates and
Randgold & Exploration Company were put up for sale.
These were then purchased in the name of DRD with funds supplied by Western Areas.
However, when Harmony took control of Randfontein Estates in 2000, Project Eagle crashed and burned.
In a written agreement, CAM and JCI pledged to purchase the rest of the shares acquired in the other companies bought by DRD. They agreed to pay DRD a monthly `option fee in arrears`.
However, no money was paid by CAM and JCI to DRD. Eventually, in December 2001, DRD gave the shares back to Western Areas and paid the balance owing.
Kebble said Mark Wellesley-Wood, the chief executive of DRD, was under no pressure to sell these shares to Western Areas as JCI had been more than willing to purchase those shares.
He said Wellesley-Wood had acted `to hurt us` by selling these shares to Western Areas, of which JCI held a little more than 40 percent.
