The secret life of 'Mr Liquidator'

High-profile liquidator Enver Motala is really convicted fraudster Enver Dawood, and runs an operation of "skelms and skermunkels" (crooks and scallywags), according to Department of Justice officials.

Motala is estimated to have made more than R100-million in the past decade, rising from nowhere to be appointed to wind up failed companies including Pamodzi Gold, Wendy Machanik Properties, Retail Apparel Group and pyramid scheme Krion.

But his lucky streak came to an end this week when he was sent a nine-page letter from the department, booting him off Pretoria's panel of liquidators.

Most alarmingly, master of the high court officials said they had evidence that Motala had a former identity - Enver Dawood, a man who had been "convicted of one count of theft and 93 counts of fraud".

"Documentation from the [then] Department of Internal Affairs ... [showed] that on 22 June 1981, the department had consented to Enver Mohamed Dawood changing his name to Enver Mohamed Motala," the letter said.

Motala signed a gun licence declaration in 1992 in which he admitted Dawood's convictions.

The Insolvency Act says a person cannot be a liquidator if he has "at any time, been convicted of theft, fraud, forgery or .. . perjury, and has been sentenced to imprisonment without the option of a fine, or to a fine exceeding R2000".

Motala declined to explain to the Sunday Times why he had changed his name.

"At this stage, I do not want to play this matter out in the press," he said.

Although details of "Dawood's conviction" remain unclear, Motala's only defence could be if he had received a suspended sentence.

But when he was first asked by the master "whether or not (he) had convictions for offences involving dishonesty, [Motala] denied that explicitly", the letter reads.

"The master can have no confidence in your candour, integrity or transparency," it says.

And this isn't the only battle Motala is fighting with master's officials.

Motala is suing master's official Jaco Cilliers for R1-million for defamation after he told a former colleague the liquidator was a fraudster.

Court papers contain a transcript of a conversation in Afrikaans, apparently secretly taped, between Cilliers and former master's official Leon Lategan.

Until he quit, Lategan was the master in the Pretoria office - which decides who will liquidate 60% of South Africa's failed companies - and was instrumental in appointing Motala in a number of lucrative liquidations.

Now Lategan is employed by Motala's SBT Trust.

In the transcript, Cilliers urges Lategan to quit his job with Motala's company.

"You must get away from that SBT and their fraud," he says.

Asked to explain, Cilliers says: "I have investigated their union support in many files and [found] everything is fabricated. Your name is being linked to this SBT and all this fraud."

To be appointed, a liquidator must have support from people owed money by failed companies - such as staff. Yet in some cases, Motala was appointed based on "support" from trade unions, which they later denied giving.

Cilliers also referred to SBT as "a bunch of skelms en skermunkels," and accuses Motala of lying in an affidavit.

When contacted by the Sunday Times, Cilliers declined to discuss the case, except to say he stood by his words. "Yes -- I meant what I said."

State attorney Paul Cavanagh confirmed the state was handling Cilliers's defence, which would be amended "in the light of this week's events".

Motala is expected to challenge his removal from the Pretoria panel - but it now seems likely that the other 13 master's offices around the country will also remove him .

Chief master Lester Basson said "Motala has been removed from the Pretoria panel, there is no doubt about that, but he has not been automatically removed from the panel in the [other offices]."

Basson said his office was now seeking to implement that decision throughout the country, so Motala would not be appointed to new cases.

But even though the master's office can remove him as a liquidator if it doesn't think he behaved properly, Motala will not automatically be removed from cases he is currently working on.

"Every matter has to be dealt with on its own merits," said Basson.