S. African High Court told Swaziland development projects worth billions were ‘a con’

Frans Whelpton, a former law professor in South Africa, who worked closely with the Swaziland / eSwatini government on projects said to be worth billions of emalangeni that never came to anything is being accused of being a conman in a high court action.

Whelpton, once of the University of South Africa, touted projects in Swaziland, including the construction of a coal-fired power station, a social upliftment project, and creation of a free trade zone.

The Sunday Times newspaper in Johannesburg reported (9 June 2019) that a Pretoria doctor Francois Olivier is suing Whelpton in the Pretoria High Court for R6m (US$400,000), saying the former professor’s ‘grand promises were no more than a con’.

It added, ‘He says his case is just the tip of the iceberg and that over the years Whelpton has pocketed about R100m from up to 40 people.’

Whelpton denied the claim and in turn issued a defamation action against Olivier, demanding R1m in damages.

Whelpton was widely known in Swaziland for many years and was said to be close to King Mswati III, who rules the kingdom as an absolute monarch.

The Sunday Times reported that Olivier said in his court papers, there were a series of ‘fraudulent misrepresentations’ by Whelpton, which included that he had acquired rights to the:

• Development of a free trade zone in eSwatini;
• Construction of a coal-fired power station and associated infrastructure; and
• Establishment of a ‘social upliftment programme’.

The Sunday Times reported, ‘[O]ne of Whelpton’s central claims - that the UN is providing millions of dollars for his work on recording customary law in eSwatini - could not be confirmed this week. A spokesperson for the UN in SA, Zeenat Abdool, told the Sunday Times none of the UN agencies operating in SA had any record of dealing with Whelpton.’

The newspaper added, ‘Seven years ago, in a separate case, a Pretoria court ordered Whelpton to pay R10m each to two doctors, Reynhardt van Rooyen and Johannes Kok, after an alleged eSwatini health-care project in which Whelpton promised them a leading role failed to materialise.’

See also

Mystery man in King’s jet saga found

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/05/mystery-man-in-kings-jet-saga-found.html

$5bn Swazi power plant was a con

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/12/5bn-swazi-power-plant-was-con.html

KING’S FAILED PROMISE COSTS PROF $2m

After a plan for a health centre in Swaziland, backed by King Mswati III, failed to materialise, a court has ordered that two South African doctors should receive US$1.2million (R10 million) each in compensation after a contract they signed fell through.

King Mswati had promised them that R3.2 billion in donor funds would be available to build a health centre, but the money did not come. Prince Mangaliso Dlamini was project manager of the scheme.

Frans Whelpton, a professor at the University of South Africa (UNISA), convinced two medical doctors Reynhardt van Rooyen and Johannes Kok to be involved in the project.

The Pretoria Newsreported that the two gave up their medical practices in 2003 to devote themselves to the scheme.

Pretoria High Court was told that Whelpton told Kok about the project when he went to him for a medical check-up. He told Kok that Swaziland planned on developing the health care project and that he had been appointed to handle the implementation.

King Mswati III and his family were at that stage patients of Van Rooyen. As Whelpton knew this, he said it would be a good idea for the two doctors to become involved in the project.

The Pretoria News reported that the doctors and Whelpton met on various occasions and the professor presented the doctors with various letters, including one signed by Prince Dlamini in his capacity of project manager of the programme. This was to prove that the programme was a reality. 

The doctors said they were also told that an amount of R3.2 billion was made available to Swaziland for this from certain donors funds and that this money would be deposited in Swaziland’s central bank. This was due to happen as soon as Swaziland’s new constitution was accepted by the Swaziland parliament.

The doctors said Whelpton told them that for their help in the planning and development of the programme, they would receive three percent of the amount, which worked out at R160m over a three-year period.

The doctors said the king assured them the new constitution would be accepted by March 2004, where after the donor funds would be made available.

The doctors started to wind down their medical practices in January 2004, although none of the donor funds had been paid and Swazi constitution had not been approved by parliament.

The Pretoria News reported Whelpton wanted to ensure that the doctors did not suffer financial loss while winding down their practices and suggested that he would loan each R10m. He, however, did not have the money available at the time and planned to pay them from money he was due to receive for work which he had done for the Swazi Government. 

Whelpton was due to receive millions from the UN for research he had undertaken regarding the Swazi common law.

A written loan agreement was signed between the parties on January 22, 2004, in which Whelpton undertook to loan the doctors R10m each. Whelpton was not able to pay them, as he was waiting to be paid by the Swazi Government.

Judge JW Louw said it was clear that there was a binding contract between the parties and that the doctors were entitled to the amount promised to them by Whelpton in terms of the loan agreement.

See also

MYSTERY MAN IN KING’S JET SAGA FOUND

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/05/mystery-man-in-kings-jet-saga-found.html

MYSTERY MAN IN KING’S JET SAGA FOUND

Mail and Guardian, South Africa

May 11 2012

SOURCE 

Mystery of the not-so-missing agent

Man 'disappeared' after recovering R28-million for the Swazi government — but was easy to find

Swaziland's finance minister, Majozi Sithole, claimed earlier this year that agents contracted to recover a R28-million deposit by the Swazi government on an executive jet for King Mswati had "disappeared".

It took the Mail & Guardian just two weeks to track them down in Pretoria.

The Swazi Parliament stopped the purchase of the jet in 2002 after an outcry over its price.

The government then allegedly contracted University of South Africa law professor Frans Whelpton to recover the R28-million already deposited with the supplier, Canadian multinational Bombardier Aerospace.

In 2008 the Swazi media quoted Sithole as saying that Whelpton had recovered the money.

The following year Sithole said Whelpton had persuaded Bombardier not to sue the government for breach of contract and instead invest R100-million in "social upliftment projects" in Swaziland.

Whelpton was then quoted in the Times of Swaziland and the Swazi Observer as saying the money would be held in trust by his Pretoria-based lawyers, Roestoff and Kruse Attorneys.

But in a radio interview in February this year the minister conceded that the money had not materialised, claiming that those responsible for recovering it had "disappeared and did not answer their telephones".

Last week the M&G tracked down Whelpton to his Pretoria residence in Ezra Road, Murrayfield.

It also established his cellphone number.

The M&G visited Whelpton's heavily protected house and posted written questions in his mailbox when no one answered the intercom.

To read the full Mail and Guardian report, click here.

See also

$5bn SWAZI POWER PLANT WAS A CON

SWAZI POWER ‘FRAUD’ RETURNS

SWAZILAND KING LOSES POWER

$5bn SWAZI ‘FRAUD’ MYSTERY DEEPENS

RAGE AT $5bn SWAZI ‘FRAUD’ REPORT

$5bn SWAZI FRAUD IN THE MAKING?

RETRACT JUDAS JIBE, KING’S MAN TOLD

The Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) is demanding an apology from Prince Mangaliso-Logcogco, the chair of King Mswati III’s advisory council Liqoqo, following revelations that a US$5 billion deal to build a power station in the kingdom was a contrick.

In 2009, when the project involving Franken Mining was announced with great fanfare as a great coup for the king, SCCCO was among a small band that doubted the viability of the project.

For this, Bishop Meshack Mabuza, SCCCO Chairman, was branded a ‘Judas’ by Prince Mangaliso.

In a statement SCCCO now demands a retraction from the Prince.

Here is SCCCO’s statement in full.

COALITION DEMANDS RETRACTION FROM PRINCE MANGALISO FOR ‘JUDAS’ COMMENT

The Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations notes with relief that the proposed US$5 Billion Mine and Power Station project is now dead. It also notes that the reasons that the deal is dead was because it was simply a corrupt money laundering scheme that would never have brought a cent to the country.

In April 2009 when the project was announced, the Coalition took a little time to do some research and within a day knew that the project was never going to be viable. It compared how other African Leaders, especially President Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, had negotiated their deals with western businesses. It looked at the way that this project was put together and came to only one conclusion. It was ripe for corruption from the start and should not be touched.

The Coalition set out a series of 20 questions that were designed to test the ability of this project to benefit the Swazi Nation. For these questions Prince Mangaliso, called the Coalition and its Chairman Bishop Meshack Mabuza ‘Judas’ for betraying the Swazi Nation. The Coalition thinks that it would be appropriate for the Prince to acknowledge his misjudgment and publicly withdraw that remark.

The Coalition also questions the assertion that no money has been spent. Who paid for the tendering process that appeared in the ‘Engineering Times’ last year? Does Professor [Frans] Whelpton work for free? Who paid for his trip to Germany and Switzerland last year?

Bishop Meshack Mabuza, Chair of the Coalition said ‘The Coalition was called terrible names for asking the questions that nobody else asks and shining a light into some unwelcome places. This is what a healthy Civil Society is supposed do. Because we do not seek power or riches, we can ask questions of those who do. It turns out that when they are too arrogant to answer us, and childishly call us names, it is because we were right. Ordinary Swazis know what happens when deals are done in the dark. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The real Judases are those who are betraying the Swazi Nation for their own thirty pieces of silver.’

See also

$5bn SWAZI POWER PLANT WAS A CON

SWAZI POWER ‘FRAUD’ RETURNS

SWAZILAND KING LOSES POWER

$5bn SWAZI ‘FRAUD’ MYSTERY DEEPENS

RAGE AT $5bn SWAZI ‘FRAUD’ REPORT

$5bn SWAZI FRAUD IN THE MAKING?

$5bn SWAZI POWER PLANT WAS A CON

The office of King Mswati III has fallen for a US$5 billion con trick over a coal powered electricity plant.

The king’s advisory body Liqoqo bypassed the Swaziland Parliament to set up the deal with international aid donors.

Now, it has been realised there was no money and the scheme was a con to ‘launder money’.

It revolves around a nonexistent company called Franken Mining. Regular readers of this blog will remember that in April 2009 I wrote that King Mswati III had secured this amount to pay for Franken Mining to build coal power stations, but suspicions were aroused because no one could trace a company called Franken Mining.

The waters got murkier when it was revealed that the Swazi Government had not been involved in any negotiations over the project: instead King Mswati deliberately by-passed ministers and his office made the deal itself.

Myself and others working independently tried to piece together the background to this deal. Chief among our concerns was that US$5 billion was said to be available through donor aid to pay for two coal-powered electricity generating stations to be built in the kingdom but there was no evidence about which international donor agencies have contributed the funding or what process was gone through before awarding the contract to Franken.

We were all right to be suspicious, because no such company existed. It was a con – but it has taken 20 months for the King’s office to work it out.

A report yesterday (5 December 2010) in the Times Sunday, an independent newspaper in Swaziland, reports Prince Mangaliso-Logcogco, the chair of Liqoqo, saying that the main intention for the unnamed donors to finance the projects in Swaziland was to gain tax relief for their respective companies and associations.

They were to apply to the US and some governments affiliated to the European Union (EU) that their companies be granted tax relief because of their involvement in humanitarian activities in developing countries across the globe.

‘We discovered that they were a syndicate hell-bent on money laundering tactics when we checked their genuineness. I can confirm that the projects we announced last year will not take off. We can’t deal with those people who wanted to help us because their financial activities are not so clean,’ Prince Mangaliso-Logcogco told the newspaper.

What isn’t fully explained is why the Prince ever thought Franken was legitimate. There was no trace of their company anywhere and the amount of money it claimed to have to invest was so huge – about five times the size of Swaziland’s annual budget.

Also at the centre of the deal was Professor Frans Whelpton, of the University of South Africa. He was supposed to be the middle man between the Swazi Government and Franken. According to Prince Mangaliso-Logcogco in 2009, Whelpton was to invest and manage the US$5 billion.

Now, the Prince says Whelpton was also a victim of the con. Whelpton made the news last month (November 2010) when another project he was involved in – to secure E400 million in development aid as part of a deal to get back E28 million deposit for a private jet for the king – was announced to be a failure.

See also

SWAZI POWER ‘FRAUD’ RETURNS

SWAZILAND KING LOSES POWER

$5bn SWAZI ‘FRAUD’ MYSTERY DEEPENS

RAGE AT $5bn SWAZI ‘FRAUD’ REPORT

$5bn SWAZI FRAUD IN THE MAKING?