Regiments is a financial services company that scored hundreds of millions of rand in business from Transnet with a leg-up from the Guptas and their associates.
The deals stem from Regiments’ appointment to manage Transnet pension money – a process the amended claim alleges was achieved with the help of Gupta influence on the TSDBF board. This obvious conflict of interest for Regiments – serving as the fund manager and, simultaneously, the counter-party in the fund’s trades – follows a pattern set by the controversial swap transactions that Regiments carried out with fund money.
This explicitly includes claims related to the rate swaps, bond churn and, ominously, any other “known or unknown” claims that may arise.The deal would suspend two anti-dissipation court orders that have frozen Regiments’ assets. These orders obtained by TSDBF also called on Pillay, Nyhonyha and Regiments to disclose all their assets.There is also a standing “Anton Piller” order against Regiments, which has seen its records seized by the sheriff.
By contrast, he claims, Pillay and Nthonyha have proposed using company assets to extinguish all potential personal liabilities to the TSDBF.Wood also suggests that Pillay and Nyhonyha want to settle in order to get their hands on assets left in Regiments and to retrieve the documentation seized during the Anton Piller raid.
It claims: “The essential features of the money laundering scheme were known to Wood, Pillay and Nyhonyha.” It notes: “Regiments…did not disclose the existence of the money-laundering scheme, in terms of which more than 50% of the revenue derived by Regiments…would be diverted to a Gupta front company.”
On 2 December 2014, the TSDBF board investment committee was authorised to engage with Old Mutual as a possible alternative to Regiments. Shane then allegedly stalled the decisions on appointing asset managers for most of 2015 until, in August that year, Regiments was back in the game with Shane allegedly overriding concerns about the company’s performance and fee structure.